


While the Music Lasts

by gunandviolin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Orchestra, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gratuitous Classical Music, Jealous John, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 11:12:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4098936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunandviolin/pseuds/gunandviolin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson, a weary veteran of the professional orchestra circuit, settles into his new position as principal clarinetist for the London Symphony, hoping that he's left his worries behind in the States. However, his sudden acquaintance with the brilliant solo violinist Sherlock Holmes and the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of his predecessor prove that John's troubles are far from over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Il canto ben marcato

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of a particularly feverish month of writing and a fetish for classical music. 
> 
> All grammatical and/or spelling errors are my own.

 

> _You are the music, while the music lasts_.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> \- T.S. Eliot

 

A concert A rang out, a clear and bright sound that resonated backstage. John Watson's hand tightened on the handle of his case.

The solitary oboe played the A steadily until the first trumpet joined in, staying on the A for only a moment before swanning off into arpeggios, the other trumpets following at its heels. The notes grew higher and higher, each player trying to outdo each other until one squealed loudly at the top of their register.

A chuckle sounded from behind him. "Were they like that in LA?"

"Exactly the same."

"Trumpet player ego - the international constant." Another chuckle, edging towards a hearty laugh.

That should have been enough to make John smile, if his stomach hadn't started rolling. He fought the nausea and managed a  grimace. The clarinets and flutes were jumping gracefully to the third, the fifth, back to the A.  

"You haven't offended me," Mike Stamford assured John, "I fully admit the drawbacks of my instrument. Amazing I've played this long without becoming an arse."

"Yeah, I'm surprised you're not a right bastard at this point." John aimed for a joking tone, but it fell flat. The sound of the winds tuning faded away, the still-sharp shrill of the piccolo hanging on longer than the rest.

Mike frowned. "Are you doing alright?"

"I'm fine."  The oboe rang through the backstage wings again.

Mike checked his watch, leaning closer to the closed double doors to peer through the crack between them. "Should've gotten here a bit earlier, given you the chance to tune. Knowing you, you'll play right on target regardless."

"Sorry," John said automatically. He didn't know what he was apologizing for. His left hand tightened even further, knuckles white over the leather handle; he prayed his swallow wasn't audible.

The echoes of the tuning strings saturated the room. Mike turned to him, his eyes filled with understanding. "Mate..." Mike stepped forward, putting a hand on John's shoulder, "It'll be fine. You're ready."

John couldn't respond. He couldn't look Mike in the eye. He focused on the small sliver of stage light spilling over onto the backstage's concrete floor. Mike continued, undeterred, "Greg said your audition was as close to perfect as any he's ever heard."

"You're taking the piss," John mumbled.

"I'm really not."

All sounds of tuning had stopped. John's eyes were still occupied with the motes of dust suspended in the light. Any minute now, he would have to step through those double doors. _Face the music_. Wry internal commentary did nothing to help his anxiety: his hand trembled violently, and he switched his case to his right hand to avoid dropping it. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The dust swirled in eddies and intricate spirals.

John Watson hadn't been in a rehearsal space for exactly one year and three days. He hadn't played with an orchestra for exactly one year and two days. The thought of the hot lights on his forehead, the rows of musicians in front of him, trying to fit into a complicated musical equation: what used to comfort him now made his throat tighten. One year, an entire year without ensemble playing. He started to take deep breaths the way his therapist had taught him: 6 seconds through the nose, 8 seconds out the mouth.

Mike hadn't noticed: he'd gone back to peering through the space between the wooden doors. He drew back abruptly as though scorched, eyes wide. He leaned in again and squinted: a single groan escaped him. "Oh, no."

"What?" John managed to choke out, his breathing failing to smother the panic rising up, hot and ugly, from his chest.

"We need to get in there before they--"

Whatever he said next was drowned out by a single feverish violin. Above the waves of panic, John's ears pricked up: the opening notes were violent, the soloist's bowing harsh and unimpaired by the rest of the strings joining in seconds later.

Mike let out a low oath. "I forgot what was happening today, I'm really sorry about this."

John vaguely wondered what Mike had to be sorry for: he was occupied with following the flow of the violin that flew above the other voices, tone effortlessly switching between the aggression of the opening and mirth laced with menace, dancing above the woodwind line. "Who's the soloist?"

Mike shook his head, lips tightening. "No one good, I'm afraid."

John scoffed shakily. His panic had started to recede back into the constant tight ball directly below his sternum, pushed down by the new stimulus of sound dancing through the hall. It was the some of the best playing he'd ever heard, on a violin or any other instrument. "I'm sorry, are we listening to the same thing?"

"I wasn't talking about that, he's obviously a great player--" Mike's words were punctuated by a perfectly-timed act of virtuosity, the glissando by the soloist ringing out above the other instruments.

A disbelieving laugh escaped John. "I'd say."

"Don't get too excited," Mike warned. He had leaned close enough to John to whisper, despite the solitude of backstage. "I said he's a great player; I didn't say he was a good one."

Castanets added to the insistent, repeated melody of the soloist. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Suddenly, the solo violin ceased, followed by a loud roar.

Mike pinched the bridge of his nose. "Let's find out."

The playing of other instruments fell away, replaced by uneasy murmuring. Another frustrated yell echoed above the whispers, and John could hear several gasps from the musicians closest to the double doors. The roaring voice was soon joined by a quieter one: the low buzz of the other players garbled the words, but John heard the second voice say something stern. The first voice snapped something back, and after a minute of exchange the second voice sounded equally furious. John turned to Mike with raised eyebrows. Mike shrugged.

A loud crash prompted cries from several members of the orchestra. John heard loud footsteps on the hardwood floor, rapidly approaching the edge of the stage and descending stairs; suddenly, the sliver of light between the double doors disappeared. He jumped back just in time to avoid being crushed by one of the doors being thrown open, a tall man storming through with one hand curled tight in his grey hair. He turned his wild eyes to Mike, his voice shaking. "I'm through. You can't expect me to work with such an ARROGANT... PRICK!" He turned his head back towards the stage as he shouted the last two words. Mike stood still, completely agog. John found himself suppressing a laugh.

The man took a deep breath through his thin nose. He seemed to gather himself, righting his square glasses and attempting to smooth his hair. With a last glare at the stage doors, he rounded the corner leading to the exit.

Realization hit John. "Was that... was that Michael Tilson-Thomas?"

Mike nodded, an incongruously grim look on his round face. "Hope you got a good look, because we won't be seeing him again."

"What in the...?"

Another set of footsteps approached them from further backstage, the brisk pace breaking into a run. A man came puffing around the corner, and John's breath caught. He had only met Greg Lestrade once, before his audition the previous month. The conductor's usually weary expression had transformed into something much more hangdog, the lines around his eyes crinkled in concern. He sighed with relief at the sight of Mike and John, sliding to a stop in front of them. "Thank God, Mike, you can probably tell me -- did Michael just leave?"

Mike nodded.

Lestrade rubbed his hand over his stubble-covered chin. "Was it because of--"

"What do you think?" Mike cut him off.

"I'm not surprised," Lestrade groaned. He looked desperately between Mike and John. "Do you think he's coming back?"

John assumed a neutral expression. Upsetting his new boss, not to mention one of the most prestigious conductors in the world, would be beyond stupid. Mike wasn't so quick, and the sharp eyes of the music director caught his crumpled expression right away.

Lestrade scrunched his eyes shut in what appeared to be intense spiritual agony. "Christ!" His hiss was punctuated by a kick aimed at the concrete wall. Not sparing another glance in their direction, he pushed both of the double doors open and rushed onto the stage.

Mike grabbed John's arm. "We'd best follow."

Judging by the wrath he had seen in Lestrade's eyes, John wasn't sure if that was the best idea. However, he was burning to see the mysterious soloist, and, though he would never admit it, he loved watching a good argument. His curiosity was enough to overcome his fear of facing the orchestra, and he straightened up and nodded at Mike. They slipped in behind Lestrade.

 

* * *

 

After the gloom of backstage, John was blinded by the overhead lights of the stage. His hearing, however, was in top form, perfectly primed to hear Lestrade's bellow.

"SHERLOCK!"

John's vision cleared, and he saw the sea of orchestra members first, instruments resting on stands, laps, and the floor. The older members' faces were drawn, while the younger ones exchanged confused looks. Several of them looked at John with startled recognition. A pale violinist picked at his sleeve, his line of sight avoiding anything near the front of the stage. The first-chair oboist wriggled in her seat, clearing her throat with a little high pitched " _hem_ " that carried across the stage. The principal cellist was the only one who seemed comfortable: she leaned back in her chair, one corner of her red lips turned up and unwavering gaze observing the unfolding scene.

It was silent enough to hear the creaks and groans of the building. Then, a massive sigh of exasperation, followed by the sharp clip of a plucked string.

"Not my fault," a dark voice snapped. Another pizzicato.

John turned towards where Lestrade was standing. The conductor's stand had been knocked on its side, the score spilling across the polished floor and forming a semicircle around an even more polished pair of dress shoes.

The man standing in those shoes held himself imperially, feet hips-width apart and shoulders thrown back. He faced the house, seemingly ignorant of the silent and bewildered musicians behind him.  John stared at the curved lines of the man's back, the dress trousers and his bespoke shirt, the scroll of his violin peeking over his right shoulder  -- what was he playing at? Rehearsals were a time when the best players in the world could show up in pyjama bottoms, and no one would think less of them. John glanced down at his own jeans, willing himself not to feel underdressed. Comfort. He had dressed for comfort. How this man could play comfortably in such tight trousers, John couldn't imagine.

Lestrade's shoulders pushed forward as though a weight had been added to his back. "Our guest conductor stormed out during your concerto and you expect me to believe that it's _not your fault_?" He looked at the orchestra for support, and then at Mike. No one made eye contact. With an exhale of disbelief, he continued "You're damn lucky I was in the hall today, or else I wouldn't have heard Michael BLOODY TILSON-THOMAS storming out! So, explain to me, if you're not at fault, who is?"

The man abruptly stopped picking at his strings. His head tilted to the right, dark brown curls shifting slightly. "Anderson."

The sleeve-picking violinist jerked up in his seat, exclaiming "I NEVER--"

Lestrade cut him off with an upturned palm. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The man scoffed, having resumed his plucking. "Atrocious bowing. Thirty cents sharp. Sixteenth note behind. Nothing out of the ordinary, if ordinary means sounding like a cat expiring."

Anderson jumped to his feet, face scarlet. "You can't let him talk to me like that!" He pointed at Lestrade. "You can't... I'm PRINCIPAL!"

" _Acting_ principal," drawled the man, now pulling stray hairs off his bow.

"Anderson, sit down and shut up," Lestrade said wearily. His stern expression left Anderson no room to protest, but the violinist's mouth shook and his face turned redder still as he sank back into his chair. The other violinists looked pointedly away.

"Now, then," Lestrade once again addressed the man's back, "if you think you've fooled me into believing your little... _strop_ was entirely because of Anderson, think again."

The man's shoulders inched forward, his hands halting on the bow as if conceding a point. "Conducting."

"What?"

"His conducting. No ictus to be spoken of, and he uses the baton as though it's a crutch. With the way he waves his arms about, you'd think he was trying to achieve flight. How he became so renowned is beyond me." Punctuated with a decisive _pizz_.

John's mouth fell open comically, Mike and Lestrade mirroring his expression. Mike was the first to recover, shaking himself as though being pulled out of a daydream. "Look, mate, don't you think you're being a bit harsh? " The usually jolly sound of Mike's voice sounded uncertain to John's ears. 

"No, Mike, and if you weren't busy trying desperately to stay in Lestrade's good graces, you might have the fortitude to agree with me."

Mike shrank back. John's mouth clicked shut.

Lestrade had come back to his senses enough to look furious. "So... there are a few points about Michael's conducting that you disagree with, so you piss him off to the point where he leaves?"

The man shrugged.

"No. You don't get to just shrug this one off, Sherlock." Lestrade's dark eyes looked murderous enough to make John's stomach turn. He hoped he'd never be the subject of the conductor's ire. "You drove our principal guest conductor away from HIS OWN 70TH BIRTHDAY GALA!"

"Find another one." The man's voice was a monotone.

"Maybe I'll just find another soloist, instead!"

In a whirl of motion, the man finally turned to stalk towards Lestrade. John recoiled at his face; the expression twisting it obscured any semblance of humanity, his eyes narrowed to small daggers of light, his mouth curled into a sneer. "I don't think so," the man snarled, alien face inches away from Lestrade.

Lestrade was uncowed. "And why not?"

There was no pause in the response. "Because you need me."

Lestrade's small mouth tightened. The silence in the hall reached an unearthly level, no one daring to breathe. John felt his knot of panic tighten painfully; he wanted to shout, laugh, anything to break the stifling quiet. The soloist didn't back down an inch, staring defiantly at the shorter man.

After what felt like hours, Lestrade exhaled, his eyes lowering. "You're right. God help me, you're right."

The man's face cleared, eyes sparkling in vicious triumph for a millisecond. Then, it was as though an eraser swept across his visage, an expression completely devoid of emotion settling on his aristocratic features. "Now, if you would be so kind as to get on the podium? We'll start from the beginning of the third movement."

"I don't think so. Just because I've decided not to fire you doesn't mean you get to order me around."

The man's eyes flashed dangerously. "We must rehearse."

"Don't pretend like you need to practice. The third movement is the simplest, the orchestra will be fine, and I need to go find Michael. Don't argue with me!" Lestrade warned as the man opened his mouth.

"I wasn't going to argue, _maestro_." The man's voice dripped with sarcasm. "I just wanted to reprimand you for being rude to your guest." The man flicked his bow in John's direction, not bothering to look.

Lestrade glanced over sharply, shoulders sagging when he saw John. "Jesus, John, I forgot about -- the rest of you can pack up! Same time tomorrow, first movement of Prokofiev and then the overture! -- anyway, I know that you were probably looking forward to playing today."

John raised one shoulder, then lowered it. "It's no problem," he mumbled.

"What?" Lestrade leaned forward, struggling to hear over the buzz of people putting instruments away and talking furtively about what had just occurred.

"I said -- I'll get to play tomorrow," John nearly shouted.

"Listen, why don't you stay for a while, get to know the stage and all that."

"No, I couldn't possibly--"

"Oh, but you will. I'm telling you, as your boss, that you need to get used to the hall. Think of it as a job, not a favour. We had it booked for another hour, anyway."

John felt an intense rush of gratitude for the tired-looking man, the trombonist who had clawed his way up to one of the best conducting positions in the world before he turned 50. "Alright, I'll just..." He trailed off, motioning vaguely to the stage.

"Right. I'm off to get our guest conductor back. Hopefully I won't have to beg." The grimace on Lestrade's face hinted that he had indeed had to do so in past instances. "Take care John, Mike." With a curt nod, he was gone.

Mike was uncharacteristically silent at John's side, his face drawn. "Er... you alright?" John cursed the discomfort in his voice; if Mike did need some sort of emotional support, he didn't know how useful he could be in helping him.

"In the short time Sherlock Holmes has been with this orchestra, he's always surprised me." Mike said, ignoring John's question, "With brilliance. And cruelty."

John followed Mike's eyes to the front of the stage, where the soloist, Holmes, stood. He was playing open notes lazily, drawing the bow slowly back and forth across the strings. He made no indication of packing up like the rest of the orchestra. "Who is he?"

Mike shot John a questioning look. "Everyone's heard of him!"

John lifted his chin. "Not me."

"How - oh. God, I'm an idiot, I keep forgetting... he only showed up on the scene seven months ago."

John stiffened. "It's fine." The hermetic nature of the past year of his life had, after all, been self-imposed. No music news in, no news of his own playing out. "How can he just order Lestrade around like that?"

Mike glanced at Holmes again. "We'll talk about it later."

John looked over to see Holmes still occupied with slow arpeggios. "It's not like he's listening--"

"He's always listening," Mike corrected darkly. "We'll get a bite before rehearsal tomorrow, say, 8:30? I'll drop off your stuff, tape your key above the door frame when I'm done."

John's curiosity was overwhelming, but they couldn't talk here, and John couldn't leave. He owed it to Lestrade to stay and play. "Alright."

Mike turned to leave, but John was struck by an impulse and grabbed his arm. "Mike, I have to thank you for all this. I don't know if I would have, erm, gotten back on my feet quite so nicely without your help."

Mike's eyes were back to their usual warmness. "All you needed was a good kick."

"Maybe so," John chuckled, "But, seriously, I owe you one."

"Don't mention it. Just play, and you'll have repaid in full."

"I can do that."

Mike laughed. "You'd better."

John ignored the sick swoop of his stomach. "See you tomorrow then?"

"See you!"

The last few musicians, double bassists wheeling their cases, followed Mike through the stage doors, leaving John alone.

Alone, except for the man playing molasses-slow scales at the very front of the stage.

John considered asking him to leave, remembered the alien fury on his face when confronting Lestrade, and quickly discarded the idea. With a sigh, he began to weave his way through the half-circle of black chairs that formed the string section. Getting to the the first row of seats at the back, he sat heavily. This was his chair; the gold words "CLARINET I" were pressed into the black folder on the music stand in front of him. He willed his hands not to shake as he opened it: Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 3 greeted him. He exhaled a breath of relief: dead easy. He had lost count of how many times he had played it during his time in school alone. Prokofiev's second violin concerto was further back in the folder. John was unfamiliar with it, but he reasoned that as long as the concerto wasn't for clarinet, he had no reason to worry.

He set his case in his lap. A sudden wave of exhaustion hit him: he hadn't had the chance to sleep on his 11-hour flight, and Mike had picked him up at Heathrow and driven him straight to the Barbican Centre. His body was just now catching up, demanding sleep. John shook his head like a dog clearing its ears of water; he just needed to hold on for another hour, and then he could take a cab, retrieve the key hidden by Mike, and go straight to bed. He found himself, in part, grateful for the fatigue: it covered his anxiety like a thick blanket. He flicked up the two latches of his case, swinging it open. He hardly needed to look at the instrument as he assembled it, relying on muscle memory: reed in mouth to moisten it, bell followed by lower joint stalk followed by upper joint stalk followed by barrel followed by mouthpiece. He had greased each cork joint religiously while waiting in LAX, so they put up no resistance. Taking the reed out of his mouth, he inspected it one last time and found no chips or cracks. Satisfied, he aligned it with the mouthpiece and screwed on the metal ligature.

Before playing, he sat back in his chair to take in Barbican Hall. A sea of dark chairs spread out in front of the stage, their muted jewel tones complementing the light gold of the wood of the stage and walls. John had seen a lot of music halls over the past decade, and this was the first that felt anything other than empty without an audience; it felt warm, even encouraging. It urged John to play. He glanced over at Holmes, who hadn't moved at all from his spot at the front of the stage but had started to play raspy low notes, abandoning the rich tone he had possessed just minutes ago. John huffed out a breath in annoyance; he wasn't keen on warming up while a cross stranger hacked at a violin, but Holmes was far enough away to not be an insuperable distraction. Inhaling from the bottom of his lungs, John placed his lips around the mouthpiece and began a simple chromatic scale at the bottom of his register. Each successive note grew in volume, and when he finally reached the top of his comfortable register, the sound echoed brightly throughout the hall. John allowed himself a little grin of satisfaction; it wasn't often that a musician was given the opportunity to play on a high-caliber stage alone.

A particularly scratchy note resounded from the front of the stage. Well, John amended, almost alone.

Undeterred, he flitted around different exercises to warm up his fingers and tongue, not needing sheet music after years of repetition. It comforted him to think that, throughout his career, these exercises had been there as constant companions. He remembered learning them as a boy, being frustrated when his teacher insisted that he begin every practice session with them. "But it takes forever!" he had complained. The fifteen minutes they took stretched the tiny amount of patience he had for the whole enterprise. Flash forward ten years later, and he was playing them with a singular devotion before every four-hour practice binge in the small basement room of the Colburn School. That room practically belonged to him; he remembered the anxiety of preparing for endless auditions. Another decade, and he was playing them with decision, preparing to challenge the principal clarinetist of the LA Philharmonic. Five more years, before the biggest concert of his life--

John jerked back to the present as a loud squeak issued from the bell of his clarinet. He immediately put the instrument on its stand in front of the chair; his hands were getting sweaty, and he couldn't risk dropping it. His steady breaths had turned into pants that bounced off the walls of the hall, sounding harsh in the silence. The silence... John realized that the violin notes had stopped as well. Holmes had turned around and was fixing him with a look that, even from 20 feet away, gave John the feeling that he was trapped in an MRI machine. Holmes was analyzing every impulse in his brain, seeing all of John's insecurities while cradling his violin in front of him like a child. John focused on the black notes in front of him, trying to get his loud breaths under control. He didn't need Holmes labeling him as unstable, unfit for the position; there was always the chance that he would confide in Lestrade.

"I see that you've just arrived from Los Angeles."

John snapped his eyes up to Holmes. "Wow, how'd you figure that out?" The sarcasm would have been more effective, he thought, if his voice wasn't thin from lack of air.

"The bags under your eyes indicate lack of sleep, but not chronic, so this is a one-time instance. Your watch is eight hours behind, so balance of probability says jetlag. Eight hours behind means you could have arrived from anywhere on the west coast of the United States. Your accent indicates you grew up in Surrey, but you draw out your vowels in a manner that screams California. So, a skilled musician who's just come from Los Angeles." He paused, scrunching his face in thought. "It could have been San Francisco, but then that buffoon Tilson-Thomas might have stopped to talk to you."

"I don't think he was in the mood to talk to anyone-" It took John a second to catch up to everything that Holmes had just said. "Wait, are you saying that you didn't actually know who I was?"

Holmes' face was blank. "Yes, of course. You asked how I deduced it, so I explained. Awfully tedious."

"I was being sarcastic." Holmes head tilted to the left as if trying to understand what the word meant. John sighed and continued, "I was under the impression that - well, it sounds a bit conceited - that everyone here knows me."

"And I thought everyone knew me, but apparently you don’t have a clue," Holmes rebutted.

"And why d'you think that?"

"Because you've enlisted Mike to tell you all about me before rehearsal tomorrow."

John's eyes closed. "So you were listening after all. I thought Mike was being paranoid."

Holmes scoffed. "Mike knows me well enough to never assume I'm not listening."

John was silent. Holmes shifted from foot to foot, clearing his throat. "I'm Sherlock Holmes."

"Yeah, I got that from Greg screaming at you. John Watson."

"Greg?"

"Um, Lestrade?"

"Oh, him. He does little else." Holmes' smirk betrayed his amusement. "But, please, don't let me stop you from playing. As our brave director commanded, you must learn the stage." He emphasized the last three words, pointing his bow at John.

John looked at his clarinet and felt a wave of nausea. "I think I'm done for the day."

"You've barely played at all."

"It's been enough."

"You don't want to play." Holmes once again shot John an appraising look. "Ah. Obvious."

John's jaw clenched. "I think I'll be leaving now."

"How long has it been?"

John's hand tightened on thin air. "I don't understand."

"Since your last concert."

His throat felt too tight. "What..."

"The intermittent tremor in your left hand indicates past trauma, almost definitely psychological. You're a talented musician, but one botched note was enough to turn you off of playing for the rest of the day.” It was as though someone had flipped a switch on Holmes, and although John's look grew darker, he continued. ”So, an embarrassing musical incident. Highly public, or else it wouldn't have such drastic effects. The only question is how long it's been, that'll answer my question regarding the severity--"

"Mr. Holmes."

Holmes snapped out of his trance. "Sherlock, please."

"Mr. Holmes." John's voice rumbled in the hall. "I'd like you to leave."

Holmes' eyes widened and his mouth drooped for a second, before he once again assumed his perpetually bored expression. "I don't see why I have to, it's not your stage--"

"Leave. Now."

The twenty feet between them felt like five. Waves of fury radiated off of John, and he was satisfied at how Holmes, however infinitesimally, shrank. His voice still had its note of flippancy. "Fine."

John watched him stalk off the stage, violin still held carefully in his arms. He opened one of the stage doors, the swish of it swinging out sounding like a sharp inhale. He paused briefly, looking over his shoulder. "I was right, though."

John's back stiffened.

"Wasn't I?" Holmes' face had all the eagerness of a child who just solved a difficult sum.

John didn't want to give him the satisfaction. He would coldly pronounce that he had no idea what Holmes was talking about, and how _dare_ he make such assumptions - 

John remembered the reason for his self-imposed musical hiatus and drooped. There was no point in denying it, even to someone as arrogant and bothersome as Holmes. He sighed, tension draining out of him. "Yes."

Holmes' expression brightened.

"Now leave."

Holmes' face hardened again. "Don't believe everything Mike tells you, he's an utter fool." And with that he swept out, leaving John alone.

The door swung shut behind him, a hushed exhale.

John began to shake.


	2. Poco più mosso

“So, I’m guessing this is a favorite haunt.”

John and Mike had just walked through the coffee shop door when they had to avoid tripping over a cello case. “Well, it’s somewhat of a favorite with the orchestra crowd, I suppose,” Mike conceded, “Quick, let’s grab that last table.”

Dodging their way through the maze of people and cases, they made their way to a small corner table that hadn’t been cleared off from the last round of customers yet. “What do you want?” Mike asked, “Today’s on me.”

“Oh, no, let me give you some—”

“You’ll buy next time.”

“Fair.” John looked over his shoulder at the menu. His eyes swam with options such as mocha peppermint cappuccino and skinny vanilla latte. “Er… just coffee with milk”

“Back in a tick. Watch my trumpet, will you?” Mike made his way to the sizable queue.

John stretched back in his chair, clarinet case tucked between his feet to deter any would-be thieves. He hadn’t forgotten his breakneck chase through the streets of LA that ended in him tackling the pilferer and knocking them out with the very case they had nabbed. John didn’t necessarily like to advertise that story; he was just glad his clarinet hadn’t been harmed in the scuffle.

A harassed-looking busboy approached the table and scooped the dirty dishes into a tub, barely nodding at John’s “thanks.” John couldn’t blame him; although it was 8:30 in the morning, the musicians in the small shop were laughing and chatting loudly, wide awake. John recognized the principal cellist from yesterday, red lipstick applied perfectly and surrounded by a small crowd of men. He smirked; in some ways, orchestra cliques felt a lot like they were back in primary school. A few tables away from her, John spotted the only person sitting alone: the principal oboist sat sipping a coffee and glancing around surreptitiously. At that moment, Mike passed by her table carrying the coffees and paused to talk. She glanced over at John after a minute, nodded, and stood up to follow Mike.

“John, this is Molly, our oboist,” Mike said with a smile. Molly was half-hidden behind his back, but gave a small wave.

“Nice to meet you. I only got to hear your tuning note yesterday, but it was amazing,” John joked.

Molly gave a laugh and stepped out from behind Mike. “Well, you’ll get a better idea today.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Mike handed over the coffee to John, sitting with a grunt. “I suppose you’ll want to hear what I promised to tell you.”

Molly’s lips paused over her cup. “What did you promise to tell him?”

Mike gave a dismissive wave. “Just Sherlock. Nothing you haven’t heard before.”

Molly gave a quick nod and took a huge gulp of her drink. “I might tune out a bit, it’s dreadful.” She winced. “Sorry, tuning puns…”

Mike gave her a placating pat on the shoulder.

“What’s so dreadful about Holmes’ story?” John’s curiosity burned bright, coffee ignored.

“Well, by now you’ve probably noticed that he’s a complete genius. And prat.” Mike’s expression was wistful. “Did he manage to guess your entire history after I left yesterday?”

“Er, yeah. Does he usually do that?”

“He’s done it to all of us. Last year at the New Year’s party, he outed Molly’s boyfriend as gay to the entire orchestra.”

“And assembled family and friends,” mumbled Molly into her drink.

John shook his head. “Why?”

Mike glanced around, then leaned forward, his voice lowered. “What you need to understand about Sherlock is that he never planned on being a musician. He’s self-trained.”

John barely resisted the urge to gasp. “How?”

“Who knows? He’s a graduate chemist.”

“How does a chemist end up soloing for the LSO?”

“That’s where it gets a bit wobbly. Up until a year ago… Sherlock was a drug addict.”

John coughed on his coffee; this had all accelerated quite quickly.

Mike continued, undeterred. “Things came to a head when his brother found out he was trying to sell his violin for drug money.”

Molly groaned.

“No one really knows much about his brother, not even me, other than he’s a really high-up government-type bloke. He pulled some strings and got Sherlock a chance to audition for Lestrade.”

“And then?”

“Lestrade said that  if Sherlock got clean, he’d have a high-profile concerto performance and the principal chair waiting for him.”

“Jesus,” John exhaled.

“Yeah. And so here he is, clean just in time for the new season. His concert this weekend is already completely sold out. Has been for months”

“How do the other violinists feel?” John asked, remembering Anderson’s red face.

“Well, a lot of them think Sherlock doesn’t deserve it—”

“Of course he does!” said Molly indignantly, her fierce tone startling John.

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Mike said gently. “He’s the best violinist in London, if not in Europe. They just think that without his brother’s help, he’d still be nameless.”

John couldn’t argue with that. “But none of this explains why he does that… guesses things about people for fun, I mean.”

Mike shrugged. “According to him, it keeps him from getting bored.”

John sat in silence for a minute, remembering his cold coffee and taking a bitter sip.

“I feel sorry for him,” Molly said quietly, “He doesn’t exactly have many friends. Or a girlfriend.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that…” Mike trailed off suggestively.

Molly’s eyes widened, and she leaned forward. “Wait — what? What have I missed?”

Mike’s eyes twinkled behind his glasses, and he delivered his next sentence slowly, with relish: “Rumor has it that Miss Adler has her eyes on someone new.”

“Miss Adler?” John asked. Molly inclined her head towards the corner table John had seen earlier: the principal cellist still sat surrounded by suitors, a queen upon her throne. “Ah.”

Molly looked shell shocked. Her eyes flicked between the cellist and Mike, disbelieving. “I’ve never even seen the two of them talk, let alone…” She couldn’t seem to find the words, and her hands fluttered around her head instead.

“It’s just what I’ve heard. It’s not like I can ask Sherlock to confirm.”

John grinned at the idea.

“Regardless, Irene already has the entire orchestra to choose from.” Mike looked pointedly at the harem-like corner table. “If she wants the pick of the litter and is a good babysitter, she couldn’t do better than Sherlock.” He punctuated his sentence by downing the rest of his coffee.

Silence fell upon their small group, each of them absorbed in their own thoughts. John was trying to make sense of everything Mike had just told him: an addiction-prone man with a mind suited to logic and reason, with one of the highest-paying jobs in the classical music world. He pictured all of the musicians who had practiced for hours and hours every day, perfecting their technique and spending thousands to be classically trained. He then imagined them being outdone by someone who had, to their minds, been scooped off the street by the government and foisted onto Lestrade.

“Poor bastards,” John sighed. The other two mumbled in agreement, although, John thought, they probably had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

John couldn’t summon up any real animosity towards Holmes. The small amount of bitterness he held was a result of Holmes’ correct deductions. It was  stupid, he thought to himself, because to everyone else it was common knowledge. If possible, that made it even worse: the only person who didn’t know his biggest embarrassment had deduced it with a look. Was it that obvious? Did his posture scream ‘failure’? Did the clothes he wore, the faces he made, the way he clenched his hand make him an open book detailing how miserably he had fallen from grace? It was these questions that had kept John up the night before in his lonely little bedsit, exhausted but unable to sleep.

Little as the bitterness he felt for Holmes was, it had curled into a dark ball and found a companion in the dark panic already clogging his chest. They were small, but they had their own centers of gravity: John felt off-balance, as though he was standing on an incline. His left hand began to twitch.

Mike glanced at his watch. “Well, it’s 9:15, so I suppose we’d better get a move on.”

Just in time. John sighed. It wouldn’t have done for him to have a nervous breakdown in the coffee shop. “Right, yeah.” He scooped up his case and checked to make sure Mike and Molly did the same.

As they walked out of the shop, John looked over and caught the eyes of Irene Adler, who showed no sign of leaving her comfortable circle of admirers any time soon. Her eyes flashed and she gave him a languid wave, smile turned mischievous. John gave a small, confused wave back before rounding the corner into the foggy autumn morning.

* * *

 John sat back in his chair, reed hanging out of his mouth as he twisted on the barrel of his clarinet. Only half of the chairs onstage were occupied; his quiet walk with Mike and Molly to the hall had taken no time at all, and it wasn’t unusual for string players to show up a bit later. The horns were already deep into their warm-ups behind him, and the second clarinet had been setting up as John walked on stage. He was now running through his scales one by one, acknowledging John with a nod in-between A-flat and A. John returned the gesture, straightening his ligature.

He found that Lestrade’s insistence the day before had indeed helped him: he only felt one jab of self-doubt as he took a deep breath and began warming up. It was easy enough when he closed his eyes: he pretended he was back on the stage alone, with nothing but the walls to hear him play.

And Sherlock Holmes. John’s eyes snapped open: Anderson was already seated in the principal chair with a cross look on his face, clearly not recovered from the events of the previous day. Holmes was nowhere to be seen. John wondered if Molly would know; he was about to halt his exercises and lean forward to tap her shoulder when he stopped himself. Although his playing was a continuous stream, his mind jumped from conclusion to conclusion. Why would Molly know where he was? She herself had said that Holmes didn’t have friends, and he guessed that she was including herself in that statement. Also, she was in the middle of adjusting a reed with a look of extreme concentration on her face, and John wasn’t about to  get between an oboe player and their reed. He supposed Mike might know better than Molly, seeing as he had a plethora of knowledge about Holmes. How did he know so much, after all? That wasn’t something he had explained at coffee that morning. Thoughts swirled around John’s mind as he played on autopilot, fingers moving rapidly over the keys of the clarinet.

Why was he even curious enough to want to ask someone? As he played a tricky etude involving ascending a scale by fifths, he scolded himself. Holmes had proven himself to be nothing other than a nuisance; brilliant, but a nuisance nonetheless. He should be relieved that he wouldn’t be subjected to Holmes’ particular brand of mind-reading. But still, how were they supposed to practice the concerto without a soloist? Would the concert have to be canceled? The whole thing seemed unlikely: Mike had said that Holmes had sacrificed his drug habit for this. Then why was he missing? What could have—

“Alright!”

Lestrade’s raised voice brought John back to the hall. He caught Irene slinking to her spot from stage left. How she could slink with a cello, John didn’t know, but she slid into her seat right as Lestrade continued his announcement. “Like I said yesterday, we’ll be starting with the Beethoven today, then moving on to Prokofiev in the second hour.”

Ah. John could have kicked himself, and might have if his clarinet wasn’t carefully laid across his lap. Of course Holmes wouldn’t be here: he didn’t even play the piece they were rehearsing.

“And I have some good news,” said Lestrade with a grin, “We’ve got our birthday guest back.”

Michael Tilson-Thomas loped on stage to loud applause, looking nothing like the frazzled man John had met backstage yesterday. John thought he would address his sudden exit, but he simply stood beside Lestrade as the applause faded. Perhaps, John thought, the difficulty of Sherlock Holmes didn’t even need to be acknowledged in order to be a sufficient reason.

“I didn’t have the chance to introduce him yesterday, but I’m sure you’ve all noticed that we have a new clarinetist! Let’s welcome John Watson” Lestrade motioned at John, hand encouraging him to stand up. John did so with little grace, remembering to grab his clarinet at the last second as it nearly tumbled off his lap. He gave a curt nod to the applauding musicians: some of them looked at him with undisguised curiosity, others with unbearable sympathy or encouragement. He supposed he should be thankful he saw no pity or disdain. He sat back down almost immediately.

The applause faded. “So, not that any of you need reminding, but I might as well before I leave. We’ll be here same time tomorrow, running the second movement of the Prokofiev, break for lunch, dress rehearsal… you all know the drill. Just try not to be late,” he concluded, a glare with no bite directed at the innocently-smiling Irene. “Play well!” He walked in his purposeful manner through the doors on the right side of the stage. Tilson-Thomas took to the podium and pointed at Molly. She played the tuning notes without hesitation.. Wasting no time afterwards, he raised his baton. “Ok, folks, I’d like to start at Tempo II.” His smile was genial, revealing none of the stress of yesterday. John was impressed; he had seen Tilson-Thomas conduct once when he had taken a trip to San Francisco, but he hadn’t worked under him before. John could appreciate his method: no-nonsense, straight to the music.

The first portion of rehearsal went as well as John could have ever expected. He felt little to no unease with his part, even the more exposed sections where it was something more soloistic. He fell into a good musical acquaintance with the rest of the woodwinds as he played, quickly learning their habits: Molly could be a bit too quiet when she first came in, but her tone would blossom as she continued and John learned when to back off and  let her voice come through. The principal flautist would have looked almost elderly, if her playful nature and quick fingers hadn’t translated into some of the most nimble playing John had ever heard. The bassoonist sitting on John’s left had perfected the technique of bouncy playing while staying completely in time with the conductor. John completed the quartet of principal woodwinds, and for the first time in a year he started to feel comfortable with his playing. Rather than focusing on the individual notes, he shaped the phrase: he let it swell romantically and drive forward when appropriate, and sometimes the character of the music called for both. The rapport between the musicians grew until the end of the piece, a riot of sound ending in a perfectly synchronized attack.

Tilson-Thomas leaned back, smile full of satisfaction. “Well, I started at Tempo II because I thought it would give the first violins some trouble, but I guess we got a little carried away…” John found himself fighting to keep a smile off his face. “If you please, we’ll start at the trumpet call? Letter G, I think?” John looked over to see Mike heft his instrument up to his lips, only too eager.

The first half continued much along these lines, Tilson-Thomas returning to certain parts of the music if there was anything tricky or out of the ordinary for an instrumental section or if he wanted the dynamics and  phrasing to be played a particular way. After an hour, he dropped his hands to his sides. “Well, to be honest, I’ve run out of things to work on.” The group laughed. “Why don’t we break? We’ll start again in 15 minutes.”

The stage began to buzz with chatting and descending scales from the warming-down brass players. John relaxed in his chair, and looked up to see Sherlock Holmes sitting in one of the back rows of the stalls. He had to suppress a jump of surprise; had he really snuck in without John noticing? He always found people entering the hall mid-rehearsal irritating because his attention jumped directly to them. Holmes caught his gaze and John quickly looked away.

“Bit creepy, that.”

John turned in surprise to the man sitting next to him, the second clarinetist. “What?”

The man nodded in the direction of Holmes. “Coming in here like a bloody ghost. He could have just waited backstage.”

John made no reply, looking again at the violinist hidden in shadow.

“I’m Henry Knight, by the way.” Henry stuck out his hand and John took it, noticing the prominent tobacco stains on his fingers.

“You smoke? Not very good for lung capacity, I thought.”

“Yeah, probably why you got the principal spot,” Henry lamented. John felt his eyebrows furrow, and Henry raised both his palms in supplication. “Not that you don’t deserve it! I admit, I was a little unconvinced when Lestrade made the announcement—”

“Oh, don’t mind him.” The principal flautist had twisted around in her chair, fixing her kind eyes on John. “He just had a soft spot for Lester. We all did, really. Quite sad.” She wrung her hands together; she had rolled up the long sleeves of her purple dress, presumably to keep them out of the way while she played, but they were inching back toward her wrists. “I’m Martha Hudson.”

John opened his mouth to exchange pleasantries, but at this point Molly had turned around in her seat as well. “Did someone mention Lester?”

“Can we please not talk about this,” the bassoonist to John’s left groaned, “I don’t think Mr. Watson’s too keen on listening to us wail about the man he replaced.”

“I’m sure he’s at least curious, Sally.” Molly’s brown eyes turned to John. “Aren’t you?”

“Er…” John’s voice was unsure.

The only reason the principal position had been open at all was because of the death of Lester Murphy.  John had learned about Lester at the very beginning of his career: his first private instructor had always held the older player  up as an example of perfect technique. “You’ve got the tone, which is the soul,” she had told John, “But you’re missing some of the decision, the technique.” She had given him a record of Murphy playing Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, which was far beyond John’s skills at 14 years of age. “Use him as an example, not an exact model. Listen to his attacks, the length of each of his notes. Don’t worry about the level of the music just yet.” John was immediately enamored with Murphy’s playing style and wore down the record over the course of a few months. Less than a year later, John had played the Copland Concerto nearly perfectly at his instructor’s recital and hadn’t missed the tears of pride in her eyes.

He hadn’t even known about Lester’s death until Mike had called him with the job proposal: he had stayed away from news, especially music news during his year-long hiatus. For that reason, Mike’s initial suggestion for John to audition had confused  him. “Did Lester retire?” he had asked.

There had been a long moment of silence over the line. “You mean you haven’t heard?”

Stroke, Mike had explained. It hadn’t been much of a surprise, seeing as Murphy had been principal for the LSO for two decades and was well into what should have been his retirement years. Still, it had felt like one of John’s friends had died, a friend who had smiled at him from the record cover while he played along to the music, just starting to feel the budding hope of a future in professional music. The loss had been a kick to John: he had to get back into the orchestra world, and unfortunate as the circumstances surrounding the opportunity were, it had been the best opportunity for him. Mike convinced Lestrade that there was no need for John to send in a preliminary recording and even got him the first audition of the day. In an astonishing moment of informality, Lestrade had come around the curtain at the end of John’s blind audition to say “I’m going to put the rest of them through their paces, but why don’t you start looking for a place in London by, say… October?”

Remembering that moment of victory, unparalleled as it was by any other moment in his career, always gave John a bit of a high. Now, though, surrounded by his fellow musicians who looked at his chair and all probably saw the same ghost sitting in it rather than John, he felt uncomfortable and unwanted. “Um… I know most of it already, I think. It was a stroke, right?” Mike hadn’t gone into details.

Henry glanced around: most of the other members of the orchestra were off using the toilet or eating a snack backstage, and they were some of the last still sitting in their chairs. John didn’t chance a glance to the stall seats to see if Holmes was still there. Henry seemed to decide it was safe, and he lowered his voice to say “They say it was a stroke… but it was bizarre.”

“It was horrible,” Sally chimed in.

It was only then that John noticed how close together the heads of the five of them were, a little circle conspiring in the middle of the woodwinds section. The atmosphere was that of a seance. “What was so bizarre about it?”

“It happened after the last of Lester’s big concerto performances, Weber 2, you know. I’m sure you read about it,” said Henry.

John nodded, although he hadn’t.

“Anyway, it wasn’t exactly common knowledge, but he was planning on retiring. He was so happy to end his last season on a bang, four rounds of applause, standing ovation, he was practically bursting.” Henry paused.

John looked at the others, not knowing whether to ask Henry to continue or wait. Judging by their facial expressions (mixed horror and anticipation), he decided on the latter.

“I was the first to notice something was wrong,” Henry said in a whisper.

“That’s not true, it was me,” said Sally indignantly.

“I remember hearing Mrs. Hudson gasp first,” Molly added. John was pleased to know that he wasn’t the only one who found the concept of calling the kindly flautist ‘Martha’ beyond his reach.

Mrs. Hudson cleared her throat, and the small amount of bickering that had begun was silenced almost instantaneously. “Now, we all know who actually noticed it first.”

Sally rolled her eyes.

“Who?” John asked.

“Sherlock, of course,” said Mrs. Hudson.

“What was he doing at last season’s concert?”

“Oh, that stuffy big brother of his dragged him down. They have seats reserved somewhere near the front, I think. He was the first one backstage after, he must not have sat through all of the applause because he noticed.”

“Noticed what?” John had to fight to keep his voice down; his curiosity felt like it was threatening to burn a hole in the stage.

Molly was the first to pipe up, voice quavering. “Lester got this odd look on his face, like he was going to be sick. I think… his shoulders started to shake.”

Henry nodded. “He apparently knew something was wrong, because he headed for backstage right away. You could see him, his whole body was shaking.”

“Most of the audience — most of us, really — thought he was just a little emotional, it being his last concert, but when we got backstage—” Molly’s voice cracked, and she put her hand to her mouth.

John felt a stab of guilt for pursuing the subject in the first place, but Sally continued for her, voice steady. “And Lester was just lying there, shaking like a leaf, Sherlock right next to him all calm and collected. He had already called 999.”

“He turned poor Lester over on his side,” Mrs. Hudson recalled. “He must have thought it was a seizure. I thought it was a seizure, but then he just… stopped shaking altogether.” And suddenly, Mrs. Hudson had joined Molly, tears welling up in her eyes. John was starting to think it best to abandon the subject altogether.

Henry’s eyes were downcast. “It was an awful time for Lester to go, right when he was about to get a break for once.”

“He worked himself too hard, the poor dear!” Mrs. Hudson interjected, handkerchief blotting under her eyes.

“I don’t like it,” Sally declared.

The entire group glanced over at her, askance. “None of us like it, Sally,” Molly pointed out.

“I mean, I don’t like how Sherlock was just there.”

John watched the whole group groan. “Not this again, please,” Henry pleaded.

“All I’m saying is, he was the only one there when Lester actually collapsed. You don’t think he seemed just a bit too calm? Then, as soon as they come to take Lester away he runs off muttering about spasms and bridging! Yeah, that’s not at all suspicious.”

“And it’s time for the loo,” declared Henry. The rest of the group agreed emphatically, leaving John and Sally sitting alone. John could practically feel the anger coming off of her in waves.

“Like I said, I’m just saying it’s suspicious,” she bit out. John gave her what he hoped was a sympathetic look. She sighed. “Just… stay away from Sherlock Holmes, okay? I’ve got a bad feeling about him, and I don’t want another Lester.” With that, she had gone as well.

At this point, some of the brass players were coming back onstage to warm up for the second half of rehearsal. John didn’t feel up to going backstage: Lester’s story had deeply disturbed him, and he wanted some time to gather his thoughts before he had to play again. The one thing he kept coming back to was how emphatic Sally had been about her suspicions of Holmes. John supposed he was an eccentric man — alright, he knew he was practically mad from just five minutes of conversation — but he didn’t think that eccentricity would lead to the assassination of a friendly old clarinet player. John finally looked up at the stalls again: they were empty, every single chair unoccupied.

John sighed, then jumped as a voice directly to his right asked “And what do you think, John?”

John’s head jerked up to find Holmes appraising him. “Uh, w-what—”

“Has Sally convinced you that I’m a killer?”

John gritted his teeth. “Bit rude of you, sneaking up on me like that.”

“You’d be surprised, how much stages echo,” said Holmes, seemingly ignoring John’s statement.

“Mr. Holmes—”

“Sherlock.”

“MR. HOLMES.” John realized he was nearly shouting, and shrank to avoid the glares of the French Horn players behind him.

“Yes, Mr. Watson?” Holmes queried, the last two words delivered mockingly.

“I think — Lester was practically an old man. Weber 2 is not easy to pull off, not even at my age. So, no. I think he stroked out from too much circular breathing, no murder involved.”

“Oh, you’re wrong about that, he was certainly murdered,” Holmes said, nonchalantly crossing one ankle over the other and settling further into Henry’s chair.

John took a moment to collect his jaw off the floor. “Excuse me?”

“Murder. Definitely.”

“Can you prove that?” I’m sitting next to a murderer, John thought. He bit off a crazed laugh that threatened to jump out of his throat.

“Of course, but not here. Like I said, stages echo. We’ll get coffee tomorrow, same place and time as you did today.” Holmes began to rise from his chair, buttoning his jacket.

“How in the bloody hell do you know where I went for coffee this morning?” John’s left hand was shaking violently, and he gripped the seat of his chair to try and keep it still.

Holmes rolled his eyes. “Honestly, how would I not know where virtually every member of this orchestra goes for coffee every morning?”

It seemed very obvious to John now that Holmes had explained it out loud, so he shut his mouth with a click. Holmes gave him one last scolding look before sweeping off backstage.

As he exited, the rest of the musicians were coming onstage. Henry was one of the first, and he came to sit next to John with an astonished look on his face. “Was that Sherlock Holmes sitting in my seat?”

John saw no point in denying it, so he gave a nod.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing important. Complaining, mostly.” John couldn’t exactly tell the truth. He invited me to coffee so he can explain how Lester really died, and also it kind of sounds like he killed him. Yeah, that would have gone over terrifically.

Henry seemed to accept his answer. “He does do that a lot. And you’re new around here, so he probably thinks you’re not sick of him yet.”

John gave a short laugh. He wasn’t sure if what he was feeling could be called sick or not. He was fascinated and infuriated with the man, and he had barely had two conversations with him.

“I’m really excited for this one,” Henry said, sucking the spit out of his mouthpiece with enthusiasm.

John winced. “I’ve never heard it.”

Henry gave him a side glare, and John felt furious with himself. Rather than being the responsible musician he purported himself to be, he had gone straight to bed the previous night without caring to listen to the Prokofiev piece. He would be sightreading. “I haven’t sightread since university,” John stated.

“Good luck, mate,” Henry said with more than a little resentment.

The final stragglers from break walked back onstage, trailed by Tilson-Thomas and Holmes. John was surprised to see the two of them deep in conversation as they walked, halting at the podium and exchanging a brief handshake. John didn’t know why, but he felt compelled to  catch Holmes’ eye and raise an eyebrow; Holmes gave a minute shrug back. Tilson-Thomas turned towards Molly with an expectant smile, and she played the tuning notes for the winds and strings. John noticed that Holmes didn’t tune; he instead stood stick-straight with his violin tucked under his chin. Of course, John thought, he thinks he’s too good to tune with the rest of us. Tilson-Thomas said nothing; after the strings finished, he turned with a smile that was only slightly strained towards the soloist. “Mr. Holmes, if you please.”

With a flourish, Holmes brought his bow up and seemed to take a long pause before setting it on the strings.

John nearly dropped his clarinet.

The piece began with the violin alone, playing a slow and mournful melody. Holmes used only a hint of vibrato, fingers caressing the string as the bow barely touched it. The rest of his body remained completely still. The only motion John could see was the small movement of his left hand and the top of the bow over his shoulder. Suddenly, the solo violin shot up in pitch, and John abruptly lost track of the number of measures he had been resting. Holmes shifted his feet farther apart and leaned back as he played the top of the line, the still posture of the beginning lost.

Henry elbowed him, and John jumped to get his instrument to his mouth, smothering a curse. He nearly missed his entrance, but came in just in time to play a descending line. A few bars later, John played the melody line with care, realizing that it was an exposed part and making a mental note to mark it at the next rest. Holmes echoed the line directly after, and John noticed that he took care to phrase it the way John had. A thrill went through him: the first half of rehearsal had been all well and fine. He had learned the methods of the players in his vicinity, and how he was supposed to fit into the established group. This, however, was something altogether different — this was a snippet of musical conversation.

John found himself struggling to concentrate on playing even the simplest of phrases as the mood of the music switched to something more complex. His eyes kept straying up to where Holmes was moving violently to the music; compared to how he had began, he was now a man possessed. His head jerked harder and faster as he crescendoed, and even Tilson-Thomas was reacting, conducting style much tighter and exact than it had been for the Leonore Overture.

The violin line cut off, and John forced his eyes to focus on the simple oscillating eighth notes on the page in front of him. The oboes played a chord that was simultaneously eerie and divine, Molly’s habit of coming in too softly fitting the nature of the piece. The hair on John’s arms stood on end: a section like this was the musical equivalent of holding one’s breath, and sure, enough, Holmes began to play again and the music seemed to sigh in relief.

The new melody made John thankful that he had a small rest. Holmes’ playing had gone from rapid and driving to something unbearably sweet, each note a thing of pure joy trembling above the rest of the orchestra. John played another variant of the oscillating line under the solo, little shocks starting at the nape of his neck and traveling down his spine. He followed Holmes’ decelerando without needing Tilson-Thomas’ help, backing off when Molly entered to finish the line started by Holmes.

John managed to pull himself back into the music without feeling too distracted, trying to just listen rather than contemplate the different personages producing the sounds. The piece was more fun for John to listen to than to play: his favorite part was when the eerie oboe lines lined up in a dissonant manner with the ascending solo line, something John should have been expecting from a Prokofiev piece. The sweet, soaring melody returned, the music turning from oil to honey again. This time, instead of Molly continuing the line, Holmes himself hit the highest note yet; John looked up and saw him half-facing the orchestra, eyes closed and eyebrows furrowed, mouth slightly open as he swayed. John had seen similar looks of bliss on the faces of soloists before, but to see it saturating the normally impassive features of Holmes was staggering.

From the facial expressions of the players he could see in the string section, everyone was feeling similarly overwhelmed. Sweat shone on the foreheads of the first violins, and Anderson looked caught between pouting and crying. Irene Adler, although concentrated, had a soft smile gracing her lips. When the melody once again segued into a variation of the eerie line played by the woodwinds, he felt the group as a whole shift, feeling the drive towards the end of the movement. John was suddenly glad that he hadn’t listened to the piece beforehand: the suspense of each shifting line of Holmes’ music was giving him a high that he hadn’t felt since his first rehearsal in a professional orchestra.

Instead of building to a loud ending, the piece dwindled to despairing groans from the horns and the repetition of the mournful introductory melody. Finally, Tilson-Thomas stopped conducting altogether, letting Holmes do what he had been doing all along: lead the orchestra. His body movement conducted the strings to two loud pizzicatos, a short pause, and then two more short ones. As the echo dwindled into silence, no one dared to breathe. Holmes’ hand was still poised over the bridge of his violin, still half-facing away,  shoulders rising and falling heavily. After a tense number of seconds, Holmes let his violin fall to his side. John let out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.

Holmes turned to Tilson-Thomas, his face once again a smooth mask. The only sign of exertion was the pink hue splashed across his high cheekbones. “Was that suitable?” he inquired, as though he were commenting on the weather.

A rich laugh filled the hall, and John looked over to see Irene stifling it with one delicate hand. Tilson-Thomas glanced at her, and then back at Sherlock. “Um… very much so.”

The rest of the orchestra had various looks of shock plastered on their faces. Anderson was tinged green. Molly’s eyes gleamed, and Henry kept muttering “What…” under his breath. John kept his eyes on the front of the stage.

“Are there any sections that you found lacking?” probed Holmes.

Tilson-Thomas shook his head. “Let’s just call it a day.”

“Very well.” Holmes’ eyes flicked over to the orchestra, landing on John briefly, moving to Irene, and then settling back on Tilson-Thomas’ flabbergasted face. “We’ll continue tomorrow.”

“Yes, yes indeed. Tomorrow.”

Holmes walked offstage, seemingly unperturbed by the complete silence of the orchestra he left behind.

The door closed behind him, and the stage broke into an uproar. Tilson-Thomas remained still at the front of the stage, eyes wide, as fervent discussions broke out between the different sections.

“Jesus!” Henry slumped back in his chair.

“I don’t know why everyone’s so surprised,” Sally grumbled. “He did play yesterday, you know.”

“Yeah, for about a minute!” Henry wiped his hand across his forehead. “Tell me I was hallucinating. It’s impossible.”

John was puzzled. “Why is it impossible?”

“I was still convinced he only got in because of Big Brother Patron.”

“Henry,” Mrs. Hudson reprimanded.

“He proved you quite wrong, didn’t he?” said Molly stridently.

“Yes. I’m not too proud to say it.” Henry shook his head.

John felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around to see Mike’s grinning, florid face. “What did you think?”

John opened his mouth, but had trouble finding the words. “It was… brilliant.”

“I’ve never heard a violinist play like that, and we’ve had Midori and Joshua Bell solo in the past year alone.” Mike’s grin grew wider. “Just imagine how the audience will react.”

“How do you think the turnout will be?”

“Well, since it’s a one-night performance, it’s been sold out for months.”

John looked out towards the chairs in the hall, imagining every single one of them filled while Holmes played. “People are going to cry.”

Mike guffawed. “It’s going to be great. I’m heading home, but do you want to meet up again tomorrow morning?”

“Er…” John hesitated. “Well, I already have plans.” Mike’s face fell, and John quickly amended “But I’ll see you at the coffee shop! If that’s where you’re going, I mean.”

“Oh, so you’re going with someone else, I see how it is.” Mike had returned to his joking self. “Well, I’ll keep an eye out for you and her. We’ll have a chat.”

“Definitely — wait, what?” John’s stomach dropped at Mike’s insinuation. “No, no, it’s not like that—”

“Oh, don’t be so defensive, John. It’s been, what, a year since Mary? You deserve to get out there, play the field and all that.”

“You don’t—”

“I’ll see you in the morning. Try to get some more sleep, you look exhausted.”

Mike departed with a wave before John could say anything else. In a way, John was glad he hadn’t had the chance to explain. What reason could he possibly give Mike for getting coffee with Holmes? As good of a friend as Mike was, John was almost certain he wouldn’t take kindly to anything murderous or shifty. Mike had liked Lester as much as the other members of the orchestra. John started to pack up his instrument. Tilson-Thomas had recovered himself enough to gather up his scores, and Mrs. Hudson had stopped her exclamations of joy. The other conversations had faded to a low buzz as everyone got ready to go home. As he looked around at his new acquaintances putting away their things, he tried to picture their reactions to Holmes’ declaration of murder. Sally would think her suspicions were confirmed, and Molly would stop defending Holmes. Henry would curse, Mrs. Hudson would cry. They would all believe Holmes was a killer. Yes, John thought as he put his reed in its case, it would be best to keep this to himself.


	3. Affrettando

The smell of coffee did little to settle John’s nerves as he walked into the cafe the next morning. He had gotten there early to avoid any awkward greetings with his friends, and he was hopeful that Holmes hadn’t arrived yet either. His hopes were unfounded; Holmes gestured from the corner table that John, Mike, and Molly had sat in the previous day. John cast a surreptitious glance around the shop as he walked towards the table; no one else paid any attention to him, as the rush of orchestra members wasn’t there yet. Holmes rose to shake his hand: John expected his grasp to be icy like the rest of him, but Holmes’ hand was warm and dry around his own.

“I took the liberty of ordering you a coffee. I assume you don’t take sugar.”

“How did you…” John shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” He took a swig, appending a hasty “Thank you, Mr. Holmes.”

“Why do you insist on calling me that?”

“What, your name?”

“Mr. Holmes.” Holmes sneered. “It’s like you’re talking to my brother.”

John shrugged. “I barely know you.”

“No, that’s not it.” Holmes turned his sharp gaze, and John felt the familiar x-ray sensation.

“Don’t,” he said darkly, and Holmes smirked.

“Ah. You’re angry about something I figured out. A weakness you don’t like being exposed—”

“I said. Don’t.” John’s tone left no room for argument.

Holmes took the warning. “If you want to continue being ridiculously formal, fine.”

“I’ll do whatever I see fit, thanks.”

There was a tense silence broken only by John taking a gulp of his coffee. Realizing that Holmes wouldn’t tell him anything about Lester if the conversation continued this way, John grudgingly fished for something to say.

“I see Lestrade’s making you play nice with Michael,” he finally commented.

“No way around it,” Holmes said, eyes darting around the room rather than focusing on John. “I’ll admit he’s not a complete fool, and he took the changes I suggested rather well.”

John gaped. “So that’s why his conducting pattern was so different for the Prokofiev.”

“You didn’t think he’d changed it by himself, did you?” Holmes didn’t give him time to respond. “There is a time for theatrics in conducting, but it isn’t when I’m at the front of the stage. I need someone precise, someone who’s a conduit between myself and the orchestra. Tilson-Thomas kindly obliged.”

John shook his head in wonder. A man who hadn’t been in the music industry for more than a year was ordering around a highly renowned conductor. What was next, Holmes making suggestions to the Queen?

“I know you’re not here to listen to me discuss the mechanics of conducting.”

John nodded. “You said Lester was murdered. What proof do you have?”

“Just a hunch at this point.”

“And that hunch is based on…?”

“Stroke victims rarely present with that amount of muscle convulsions, if at all, and they certainly don’t suffer from cyanosis or frothing at the mouth. Lester Murphy was poisoned. Strychnine, most likely.”

“You seem to know a lot about this.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, of course I didn’t kill him.” Holmes’ nose crinkled. “Strychnine poisoning is an awfully gauche way to kill someone: old-fashioned, no finesse. Even radiation poisoning is more elegant.”

“Ok, ignoring that the murder method doesn’t exactly meet your standards,” John snapped, unable to hide his irritation, “if Murphy was poisoned, they’d see it in autopsy, right?”

Holmes’ eyes grew dark. “Natural causes, no toxicology report ordered. Idiots. I doubt they’d even find any intracranial hemorrhaging, if they cared to look. It wasn't a stroke.”

“Sorry, are you saying that you’ve been to talk to a pathologist?”

“Of course,” Holmes said as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world, “he’s an old friend of mine, but his hands are tied.”

People with instrument cases had started to trickle in, and John struggled to ignore some of the glances shot at him and Holmes sitting in the corner. “Why are you telling me all of this? I can’t exactly help.”

Holmes shrugged. “You seem less stupid than the rest.”

“Less stupid,” John repeated tonelessly.

“Take it as a compliment.”

“I’m attempting to.” John looked up right as Mike walked through the door. A look of confusion fluttered over Mike’s face, and he made his way over to their table. “Oh, god.”

“Morning John… Sherlock,” Mike said, a halting smile on his face, “Enjoying your coffee?”

“Mr. Watson and I are having a private conversation, and I’d appreciate it if you’d leave,” Holmes snapped.

Mike didn’t look offended; on the contrary, his smile grew to a grin. “Sure, sure, not a problem.”

John mouthed “sorry,” and Mike winked before he walked away to greet Molly, who was looking questioningly at John as well. Great, thought John, just perfect.

“Ignore them, this is more important,” Holmes said impatiently.

“Like I said, I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”

Holmes gave a long-suffering sigh. “If I approached others with my suspicions, they’d likely think that I was the killer, as you’ve assumed since I brought up the subject yesterday. Don’t bother defending yourself.”

“Alright,” John conceded. “But I still don’t understand.”

“For whatever reason, people seem to trust you.” Holmes’ fine features contorted. “I’m not sure why, but they do. It’s unfortunate that you haven’t branched out to criminal work, you’d probably have a fortune by now, what with people following you around like puppies.”

John tried to conceal his snort, and Holmes glared at him. “Ok, ok, assuming you’re right… How would that help?”

“Lestrade and the police would be more likely to believe me if whatever I say is corroborated by you as well.”

“And why would I corroborate it?”

“You’ll be there when I prove it.”

John paused. “So you’re asking me to solve a mystery with you?”

Holmes groaned. “Well, if you want to phrase it in pedestrian terms. It’s more appropriate to say that you’ll watch me solve it.”

John was annoyed, but grudgingly intrigued. “What do you need me to do?”

“I’m assuming you don’t have any private pupils yet.” John shook his head; he hadn’t been in London long enough to make the connections necessary to start teaching private clarinet lessons. Holmes nodded. “Good. Then you won’t have any lessons this afternoon. We’re going to be visiting my old friend.”

“The pathologist?” John felt uneasy.

“Yes, but just to use the lab. I have a few things I need to test.”

“What if I have other things to do?”

Holmes looked John up and down. “You have no family in London, and you have no dates planned or even date prospects. You also don’t need to practice, judging by your playing yesterday.”

John was taken aback. “How were you paying attention to me, during your solo?”

“You heard what Mike said on Tuesday. I’m always listening. Anyway, that’s not important. Will you come, or not?” Holmes was obviously trying to sound indifferent, but his voice rose slightly at the end of his sentence. John understood that it was important for him to prove or disprove his theory, and he couldn’t do that without John’s help.

“Alright, then.”

Undisguised surprise flashed across Holmes’ face, before he schooled it back to neutrality. “Good. Meet me backstage after rehearsal.” He walked out of the cafe, ignoring the curious looks from the other musicians assembled.

John glanced at his watch. It was 9:15; he would leave in fifteen minutes. He needed to think over what Holmes had told him.

“SO.”

John bit back a groan at the sound of Mike’s voice. He obviously wasn’t going to get any time to think before rehearsal.

Mike sat in the recently-vacated chair. “You didn’t tell me you were meeting with Sherlock Holmes.”

“Well, you didn’t really give me a chance,” John pointed out.

“I’ll give you that. Want to start walking over?”

John hadn’t wanted to leave so soon, but maybe walking would distract Mike. He finished the last dregs of his coffee. “Alright, let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

 

John disassembled his clarinet, feeling the fatigue down to his bones. His year away from orchestral playing had accustomed him to short bursts of playing interspersed with plenty of breaks, and the nearly three hours of straight rehearsal had worn him out. He felt emotionally exhausted as well: practicing the second movement of the Prokofiev concerto followed by a full run-through of the whole piece had proved quite a challenge for John’s concentration. He was constantly surprised that someone who seemed unfeeling could produce the sheer emotion present in the second movement: compared to the first and third movements, the second was a love letter, a sweet respite. John had been more careful about his first entrance, at least, and avoided any further elbowing from Henry.

For a minute, he entertained making his excuses to Holmes and going home for a nice nap. Then he remembered how Holmes had acted that morning, trying to hide that he was afraid John would refuse to help him. John mentally cursed himself for being too bloody nice as he shut his case with a click. He waited for the others to vacate the stage; after the minor fiasco that had been created that morning, he didn’t need anyone to see him leaving the hall with Holmes. He got out a pencil to mark his music so his hanging about didn’t seem suspicious.

Finally, the stage was empty, and John gathered his things. The moment he was through the stage door, a petulant voice said “Took you long enough.”

John recoiled, then relaxed as his eyes adjusted to the dark. Holmes stood just past the entrance to the stage, arms crossed. “Do you know how rude it is to surprise people? I’m starting to sense a pattern.”

Ignoring John’s comment, Holmes began to walk briskly towards the exit. “It doesn’t matter how late we get to the lab, but I do have my premiere concert tomorrow night.”

John half-ran to keep pace with him as they exited the hall, heading towards the street. “Are you saying that you need something as ‘pedestrian’ as sleep?”

“Usually I try to avoid it for as long as possible, but it might be beneficial tonight,” Holmes answered seriously.

“How do you survive?”

“Quite well. My focus can be much sharper when it’s not clouded by inconsequential needs.”

“Stop me if I’m wrong, but I thought sleep was supposed to help with concentration.”

“You’re not wrong, but you’re also not my doctor,” Holmes replied.

“I doubt you listen to them, either.”

At this remark, the corner of Holmes’ mouth quirked up. They had reached the main road, and Holmes hailed a taxi, ushering John inside. “St. Bart’s,” he told the cabbie.

“Please,” John added.

Their ride to the hospital was silent. John had more questions he wanted to ask about the night Lester died, but he knew Holmes wouldn’t want to discuss it with the cabbie listening. John alternated between looking out the window and glancing at Holmes, who was firmly concentrated on the passing surroundings.

They pulled up to the hospital, and Holmes hopped out, leaving John cursing and fishing out the money for the fare. “Cheers,” he said sheepishly after paying the cabbie entirely in coins. He was going to have a stern word with Holmes.

Holmes moved too fast for John to get properly angry with him. They descended a flight of stairs to a chilly hallway lit by harsh fluorescents, passing a door marked “Morgue.” John’s skin crawled. They continued until they got to the end of the hall, passing through a door into a room littered with flasks and massive, dark bottles marked with the names of different reagents. Holmes shrugged off his coat, hanging it on the back of the door before rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt. John turned in a circle, appraising the room. “You’d think the hospital would keep things a little cleaner.”

“I don’t see why they would, as I’m the only one who uses this room.”

“How’d you get an entire lab to yourself?”

“Carefully.”

John scoffed. Holmes moved to a cabinet in the corner and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. “John, I need you to certify right now that this bag has not been opened since the night Lester Murphy died.”

John took a close look at the seal on the bag: it was marked with the date of Lester’s final concert. “You could have just done that, though. Written the date in.”

“It was assembled and signed by the pathologist. I could call him, if you’d like. Forging signatures is not one of my talents, unfortunately.”

“Alright, alright.” Just then, John actually got a look at the contents of the bag. “Is that…”

“Yes.” Holmes broke the seal without ceremony, putting on latex gloves before pulling out a small container from the bag and placing it on the lab bench.

John crouched so that it was at eye level. It was the type of container that prescription pills came in, except that it was filled with what looked like water. A single, bloated clarinet reed rested inside.

“Do you soak your reeds in water before playing?”

“No,” John murmured, still gazing at the pill bottle, “but it’s not uncommon, especially for people with dry mouths.”

“Men at Murphy’s age often experience dry mouth, especially when they’re on medication for high blood pressure.”

“How’d you know he had high blood pressure?”

“He took prescription medications and everyone automatically assumed his death was caused by a stroke. Call it an educated guess.”

The reed was ruined after months of soaking, bobbing slightly in its container. “So… you think he was poisoned via reed?” It sounded as ridiculous out loud as it did in John’s head.

“It’s not as improbable as you think. A very small amount of strychnine is needed to ensure death, especially when delivered orally.”

“If you say so.”

“I don’t just say so, I’ll prove it. Sit.” Holmes ordered, pointing to a folding chair in the corner of the room.

John opened his mouth to protest. He was going to say that he didn’t have time for this, that he was going to go home and get some sleep and that Holmes should do the same. Instead, he said “Okay” and sat down where Holmes had indicated. He frowned at the lack of co-operation between his brain and his body.

Holmes flew around the lab, dispensing different chemicals into different flasks. John watched him carefully pipette a small amount of the liquid inside the pill container, transferring it to a round-bottom flask with a mix of the other chemicals. He attached the flask to a complicated-looking apparatus and turned on a Bunsen burner underneath it, silent throughout the whole process. Holmes carefully collected liquid dripping off the end of the apparatus, and added it to yet another flask. John’s knowledge of chemistry was limited to knowing not to mix ammonia with anything, and Holmes’ methods were soon far outside of his understanding. He unwillingly felt his eyes start to droop, the lights of the lab and Holmes’ silhouette blurring into a smear of darkness on a white backdrop.

“John.”

He jerked awake with a startled “Whazzit?”

Holmes stood in front of him with a small vial, curls mussed and eyes wild. “This is the last step. The product distilled at the correct temperature, but I still need to confirm it with another method.”

“And you need me to see it happen,” John slurred, still half-asleep.

“Exactly. So, if you’re able, some alertness.”

“Give me a minute.” John ignored Holmes’ eye roll, taking his time to stretch and adjust his jumper.

“Before the sample evaporates, please,” Holmes snapped.

“Alright, alright.” John stood with one last roll of his shoulders. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m using concentrated sulfuric acid as a solvent, and with a porcelain watchglass and a bit of potassium dichromate it should be obvious if strychnine is present or not. Do you understand?”

John nodded.

“It’s absolutely essential that you understand, I don’t want to have to start over again as we have such a limited sample size.”

“Um. Well. Could you just tell me what I need to be looking for?”

“In layman’s terms, then. If there’s poison, it’ll turn violet.”

“Ah.” Much easier, thought John, Holmes could have just said that in the first place.

John joined Holmes standing at the bench and watched as Holmes pipetted two drops of the liquid in the vial onto a white porcelain dish. He then picked up a thin glass rod and touched the very tip of it into an orange powder. With an air of gravitas, he dragged it across the liquid on the porcelain.

At once, a vivid purple appeared in its trail.

“Christ,” John breathed.

Holmes grinned. “I was right. I knew I was, but having confirmation is…pleasant.”

“Holmes.”

The tone of John’s voice made the younger man’s laser focus return to the watchglass. “What, have I missed something?”

“No, it’s just… A man’s been murdered. Some respect?”

“Oh, but that was months ago—” John glared — “fine, I’ll act more morose, if that’ll make you happy. All I ask is that you stay long enough to give forensics your statement.”

“You’d better call them soon, then. I’m knackered.” John stifled another yawn.

“I already did.”

“You can’t have called them yet, unless one of your talents includes super-speed.” John knew he sounded childish, but he really was tired, and Holmes was much too excited about the recently discovered murder.

“No, I mean I called them while you were asleep.”

“But you hadn’t even tested it by then!”

“Like I said, I knew I was right.”

John shook his head. A firm knock sounded on the lab door. “Ah, this’ll be them,” said Holmes with exaggerated cheer.

John spent the next hour filling out forms, being interviewed, and assuring multiple members of the authorities that yes, Holmes wasn’t lying and yes, nothing had been tampered with. In the middle of the interrogation, a nervous-looking man slipped into the room. Holmes, not missing a beat, zeroed in on him and announced “The pathologist has arrived.” A gaggle of officers accosted the man, and the anxious look on his face descended into terror. Well, thought John, he’s not used to dealing with people. Living people, that is.

After they were satisfied with the statements and had nearly given the pathologist a heart attack, the officers left, the forensic specialist bagging the pill bottle and its remaining contents in an evidence bag. Holmes rocked on his heels with evident satisfaction, not acknowledging the pathologist as he scuttled out of the room.

“I thought he was your friend,” John said, tilting his head towards the just-closed door.

“Colleague, friend, it’s all semantics.”

“He looked like he barely knew you.”

“I needed a lab, he had access to a lab… the rest is history, as they say.”

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with your brother, would it?”

Holmes glare would have started flames on a weaker man. “Who said anything about Mycroft?”

Mycroft, John thought in disbelief. If he ever met Holmes senior, he was going to have a chat with him about naming children. Wait… why would he ever meet Holmes’ father? He shook the thought out of his head. “Just wondering.”

“If you must know, we were… ‘uni mates.’”

The phrase sounded so out of place on Holmes’ tongue that John couldn’t help but let out a snort. “Are all of your friends from uni terrified of you?”

“Yes, I’d say that’s about right,” Holmes said with a straight face.

This time, the giggles bubbled out of John helplessly.

Holmes tried to give him a withering glare, but a small smile tempered it. “Dinner?”

John was exhausted. A big part of him was still convinced that Holmes was insane. And yet…

John looked up at Holmes’ face, at the unusual expression he wore: it was one of vulnerability, one that said, much better than words ever could, that Holmes was hoping John would say yes.

“Starving.”

 

* * *

 

The following night, John found himself preparing for his first concert with the London Symphony.

He shifted uncomfortably, swimming in his tuxedo. A glance in the mirror revealed that he didn’t look as ridiculous as he felt, but it came close. Because he had just arrived in London, he hadn’t had time to be fitted for a tux and had instead borrowed Henry’s extra, from “when I was a bit wider, I hope you don’t mind.”

What John had failed to take into account was that his compact frame was both shorter and thinner than Knight’s “pre-diet” body. He was tripping over the trouser legs as soon as he put them on. With some help from Mrs. Hudson and a couple of safety pins, they had been hastily hemmed and no longer proved a threat to walking.

Unfortunately, there was nothing John could do about the sleeves reaching past his wrists.

“I finally know what they mean by penguin suit,” he grumbled at his reflection. Deciding there was nothing left he could do, he left the men’s dressing room and walked into a cacophony. Every musician was either huddled with their sections or tucked into some cranny between pieces of backstage ephemera, playing warm-ups, running through etudes, or just creating noise.

Mike gave John a jolly wave as he walked by before continuing what seemed to be a competition among the trumpets as to who could hit the highest note. Mike’s words at rehearsal three days ago about the egos of trumpet players repeated in John’s head, and he grinned.

Had he really only arrived in London three days ago? Maybe it was because the concert was already upon him, but John felt as though he had settled into his new role. Not that he had much of a choice, he thought. As a principal member, any show of instability would render him unfit to do his job, compromise the integrity of the clarinet section and, in turn, the entire orchestra. Despite his ever-present anxiety, John was determined not to show any weakness: this position had the possibility to redeem him or ruin him, and he was determined that it would be the former. With that determination, his walk became more purposeful, his thoughts no longer lingering on the uncomfortable tuxedo.

John passed the backstage wing directly adjacent to the stage, planning on getting his clarinet from where it was tucked into its case under his chair. He stopped in his tracks, however, when he heard sobbing. He looked to his left and saw a man’s back, also clothed in a tux, shoulders shaking. He hesitated, thinking of all the personal drama he didn’t want to be embroiled in. He knew from his time in LA that an orchestra could feel more like a soap opera. Still, it was less than a half hour until the start of the concert, and his conscience wouldn’t let him walk away. “Sorry, you okay?”

The man turned around, sniffling, and John took a step back. He knew him: it was Andrew West, the fourth chair clarinetist.

“I’m going to die!” Andrew stuttered, voice uneven from his sobs.

“Andrew — what?”

“I opened my case and found THESE!”

John craned his head around the once-again sobbing man to see three reeds broken cleanly in half, pieces scattered across the floor next to Andrew’s open case.

“God, that’s a shame. I don’t have any on me right now, but I have an extra in my case.” John knew high-quality reeds weren’t cheap, but he also couldn’t understand why his comment made West sob harder.

“You don’t understand! This is what happened to him, the night he died!”

John was momentarily confused. “Lester?”

Andrew nodded, taking deep breaths. “I remember, he was upset because it was his solo and he wanted to use his reeds, but he found a replacement at the last minute. A really good one, too.”

A sharp chill ran down the length of John’s spine. A replacement… he remembered the waterlogged reed he had seen in the lab the previous night: it had bobbed innocuously in the container held in Holmes’ pale hand, giving no outward hint that it was soaked with poison.“Did he say where he got the reed?”

“No, he didn’t have time.” West wiped a tear from his cheek. “I thought it was weird, but now I know for sure what’s going on.”

“What?”

“A curse!”

John stared.

“My mum told me going into any sort of show business was a bad idea, too many jinxes, so easy to fall into...” He had started to cry again. “But I didn’t listen! And now I’m going the same way Lester went!”

“Andrew, calm down,” John ordered. “I’m going to get you a fresh reed from my case. If someone else offers you one, don’t take it.”

Andrew suddenly looked even more terrified. “Why would you say that?”

“Just trust me.”

John placed a hand on the younger man’s shoulder briefly before walking through the stage door.

He remembered his discussion with Holmes at dinner the previous night.

 

* * *

 

 

“But why would anyone target Lester?” John had asked, aimlessly twirling the thin paper fortune from his cookie. He had gorged himself on his own and most of Holmes’ meal, as Holmes had claimed that it interfered with his thinking. His full stomach had turned conversation into stream-of-consciousness, and Lester Murphy was the first thing on his mind.

“I don’t know.” Holmes had sounded less than happy about it. “From the outside perspective, it makes no logical sense. Not that killers are logical, I suppose.”

“Never cut when you can untie.”

“What?”

“That’s my fortune,” John had declared, waving the tiny slip of paper at Holmes. “I thought you said you could predict them.”

“Why Lester Murphy?” Holmes’ brow had furrowed. “Not a lot of money, everything he had went to the orchestra according to his will. No enemies.”

“It’s a shame.”

“Are you still talking about your fortune?”

“Don’t be daft.” John must have been very tired, as he had become increasingly slaphappy as dinner progressed. “Lester about to retire and all that, it’s a shame he died when he did.”

Holmes’ eyes had widened. “Say that again.”

“Deaf? I said IT’S A—”

“No, before that.” Holmes had a gleam in his eye, as though he had been thinking about something far away and had just now returned to the nearly-empty Chinese restaurant near John’s flat.

“Lester was about to retire.”

“I didn’t know that, how did I not know that?” Holmes had sounded genuinely disappointed, before quickly switching back to interrogation, “Who told you?”

“I’m not surprised you didn’t know, Henry said that only the other clarinets and Lestrade had been told. What does it matter?”

“Oh, how didn't I think of it before?” Holmes had smacked his forehead. “If the murderer had done his research, Murphy would still be alive.”

John had realized that Holmes had just hit upon something crucial, and he suddenly felt wide awake. “What d’you mean?”

“One of the oldest murder motives known to man, John. Jealousy.”

“You think… someone murdered Lester because they wanted his spot in the orchestra?”

“It’s quite clear now.”

“Why wouldn’t they act earlier, then? Lester was principal for what, two decades?”

“There’s a new player in the game.” A grin had fought its way onto Holmes’ face. “Someone got tired of waiting.”

“Could you maybe explain— hey, wait!” John had grabbed his coat to hurry after Holmes, who had swept out the door without another comment. Among the crumbs of cookie, Holmes’ fortune lay discarded on the table, John getting a quick glance as he left a tip.

“All the water in the world can’t sink a ship unless it gets inside.”

 

* * *

 

John found himself hurrying through the narrow corridors that formed the labyrinth of backstage. He had just given a still-weepy West an extra reed.

He wasn’t at all familiar with the layout of the hall. “Only been here for five bloody days,” he growled as he turned a corner to find himself in a hall he had already passed through, the door to the men’s dressing room on his right. At that moment, Mike Stamford took the opportunity to come through the door and John sighed in relief. “Where’s the soloist dressing room?”

“What?” Mike looked taken aback. “Why?”

“No time, I need to know.”

“Head that way, take a right, then the first hallway on your left.”

“Thanks,” John said over his shoulder; he had started to move as soon as Mike started giving directions. He caught a glimpse of the trumpet player’s flabbergasted expression before he turned right. As if Mike didn’t have enough ideas about Holmes and him already, thought John. Not important right now.

His dress shoes smacked loudly on the concrete floors as he half-ran the path that Mike had outlined. Once he was in the hallway indicated, he was surprised to see it was one he had already been in before. He looked carefully at each of the doors instead of rushing, and this time he saw it: a small slip of paper on one of the doors that simply read “S. Holmes.” What had he expected? A star with Holmes’ name in lights? He fumed at himself as he raised his hand to rap on the quite ordinary door, pausing when he heard the music from within. It sounded like Girl with the Flaxen Hair. As he knocked, the music arpeggiated off into obscurity. John must have imagined the familiar melody; Holmes playing Debussy was beyond John’s credulity.

“Go away,” a deep voice replied.

“Mr. Holmes, it’s me.”

A second later, the door opened. Holmes was dressed in an all-black ensemble made up of a dress shirt and trousers rather than the tuxedos the ensemble wore. John thought it suited him; rather than looking washed out, his pale skin glowed against the dark clothing, his face a luminescent plane broken by the curls lying on his forehead. He looked ethereal. “Still Mr. Holmes, then?”

John’s gaze had slipped to the curve of Holmes’ upper lip. “Er, yes, I said—” Suddenly, West’s plight sped back into his mind. “—wait, that’s not important right now.”

Holmes registered John’s expression and saw something that made him set aside his bow and the rosin he had been using. “What’s happened?”

“I think it’s going to happen again. Well, it was going to, I think I’ve stopped it.”

Holmes’ eyes darkened. “Another murder?”

“Yes, if what Andrew said was true.”

Holmes gave a quick glance around the hallway, then motioned to John. “Come in.”

The room was small, with a single mirror and carpeted floors. It looked like a repurposed practice room, hardly fit for a soloist of Holmes’ caliber. John was about to point this out, but thought better of it. He shouldn’t care so much about Holmes’ dressing room, he didn’t want to inflate Holmes’ ego any further, and he kept forgetting that there was something altogether more important that he was supposed to be talking about.

“We don’t have much time,” Holmes urged, “Tell me everything, and quickly.”

John recounted the events from when he had found West inconsolable backstage. “So, they never did figure out where Lester got that reed from. It just sort of… appeared.”

“Good conjecture, John, but things don’t just ‘appear.’” Holmes steepled his long fingers under his chin. “Murphy finds a reed after all of his are destroyed, right before he’s meant to go onstage. He believes that it’s the best stroke of luck he’s ever had, he’s avoided the embarrassment of delaying the concert to find another. He doesn’t realize that the reed is laced with strychnine. It’s very lucky Lester soaks his reeds, or else I probably never would have taken the bottle containing the murder weapon.”

“I guessed all of that.”

“Then surely you know what I’m going to say next.”

“Not a clue.”

Holmes sighed, arms falling to his sides. “It means that someone inside of the hall got Murphy to take the reed, and if all of West’s were destroyed, then the killer is probably in the hall right now…”

John felt his breath catch. “How do we find him?”

“We don’t, for now.”

“Of course we do!”

“John, have you looked at the time?”

John automatically looked at his watch to see that it was 5 minutes until the downbeat. All of the other musicians were surely on stage. “Oh, shit—” he turned to leave, and forced himself to halt. “But if the murderer is here, isn’t it more important to find him than start the concert on time?”

Holmes shook his head. “You’ve foiled his plan. As long as West uses the reed you gave him, our toxic friend won’t have the chance to feed him any strychnine.”

“Gotta go!” Holmes’ assurance was enough to set John running to the stage. Barging onto the stage late at his very first concert with the LSO was not his idea of a comeback.

Lestrade, standing by the stage door with Tilson-Thomas and Anderson, looked dismayed to see John. “Why the hell aren’t you on stage? We were about to go on without you.”

“Sorry, going now — life or death — Holmes —”

“Holmes?” Anderson asked, eyes narrowing.

“I… I saw Holmes as well, leaving his practice room. He should be around shortly — or not, since he doesn’t come on until… after the overture. Yeah. Heh.” John gave a weak grin, unreturned. He whirled around and went through the stage door, getting to his seat just before the lights dimmed. Anderson came on first to polite applause, traces of hostility from minutes before wiped away as he smiled at the audience. He turned to Molly with a nod, and the first concert A rang out.

As John tuned, he glanced at Andrew. Other than his red eyes, he looked completely normal and definitely not about to fall over from a lethal dose of poison. Thank God.

Tilson-Thomas came onstage to vigorous applause. John supposed that he must make frequent visits to the LSO, judging by the familiarity of the audience with him.

The overture began. John continuously checked on West in his peripheral vision: still sitting up straight. Not about to keel over. He made a pattern of play, dart eyes over, play, dart, until his eyes began to tire from the strain of rotating so far to the left. Calm down, he thought, like Holmes said, he fixed it.

The long overture ended, the clapping drowning out John’s worries for a minute. He had just played his first piece with the LSO for an audience, and had completely lost track of the sensations throughout it because he was worried about a murder that would certainly not happen. He gritted his teeth.

Tilson-Thomas dashed down the short staircase to the stage doors while the orchestra stayed seated and the audience waited expectantly. Because the program was so short, there was no intermission. John took a generous gulp of water from the bottle by his chair. He would focus more on the concerto. If it was anything like rehearsal, he wouldn’t have much of a choice: it had proven to be bewitching.

Anderson stood up to tune again, and Molly’s familiar note was a clarion call to the audience: any small conversations that had started in the short interim were extinguished. John noted several glowing screens being hastily stuffed into purses and pockets.

Tuning stopped, and the audience turned expectantly towards the stage door. Tilson-Thomas and Holmes came out at the same time to louder applause, Tilson-Thomas smiling and giving a jaunty wave to the audience. Holmes looked as aristocratic as ever, chin held high as he nearly glided to the center of the stage, giving a small bow to the audience.

The applause faded, and Tilson-Thomas settled himself onto the podium, looking over the orchestra once and giving a small nod. He then directed his attention to Holmes, waiting for him to begin the piece. John could spot no hints of tension in the man’s back as he raised his bow up to his instrument. The only sign he gave before starting was a deep, inaudible inhale that caused his shoulders to rise.

John’s throat tightened at the first note. The sensation the music had caused in rehearsal seemed to be amplified by the presence of an audience, a packed hall with every onlooker paying rapt attention to the stage. Holmes’ playing reflected the focus, every note in the opening sequence caressed with infinite care. John was almost afraid that the orchestra joining in would break the spell, but the instruments reflected the gravity of what had been played so far: the musicians had their eyes fixed on Tilson-Thomas, who had his eyes fixed on the motions of Holmes’ hands on the violin. John’s body thrilled when he finally came in: he could feel the music flow directly from Holmes to Tilson-Thomas to himself.

He hadn’t thought about it while he was on hiatus, but he had missed this feeling. He had missed being a conduit to something beautiful, written by someone who was long-dead; he had missed the feeling of bringing that ghost back to life. He had subconsciously ached to play again with others, and he only realized it now, when he had achieved it: he was a cog in a massive machine of keys and valves and strings, and it was exhilarating. He felt like he could rise right out of himself and into the music itself, becoming a speck in the scintillating mass of pitches and rhythms.

The deeper they dove into the music, the more everything abstracted in John’s mind. The audience became watercolor blurs against the field of chairs, him and his fellow players disembodied notes urging each other to continue. How could he have left this? The thought repeated in his head as the first movement ended in a hush, and again when the second movement concluded to even more anticipation. It was impossible to get this feeling anywhere else, the sense of camaraderie in the pursuit of something transcending speech or emotion. The castanets flared up in his ears, the horns were loud behind him, and it was a hit after months of abstinence. John craved this. John would never leave again.

John looked towards the front of the stage: Holmes was nothing like the still and collected man that had strutted on less than a half hour earlier: Holmes was a bird, a splash of black feathers against the yellow wood, his arms were wings, his bow and violin the air. His face was just visible from where John was sitting, eyes open and intent on Tilson-Thomas one second and screwed shut the next. He seemed to be alternating between bouts of musical communication and complete isolation within the piece.

The tempo began to accelerate towards the end, enough for the musicians and audience to pick up on the energy. John remembered one of his more eccentric professors telling him that the end of of a well-played symphony or concerto should feel orgasmic. John had scoffed at the time, but now he understood why: the tension of the music kept building, and even though he knew the end would arrive soon, he felt as though he would snap in half before they got there. The bows of the strings worked furiously, violent choreography eclipsed only by Holmes himself, dark curls tossing and body shifting with each phrase. John couldn’t have torn his eyes away if he wanted to.

The piece ended suddenly, and Holmes staggered a step back with the force of the last pizzicato.

John had performed many concerts in which the audience had been silent for a significant amount of time before clapping. Until the night of Holmes’ solo, however, he had never heard the audience begin to applaud so fast. It was so rapid that he thought of their hands as another set of instruments, picking up where Holmes had left off.

As Holmes took his bow, John was struck with a realization. He had found Holmes’ choice of profession odd: with his gifts in logic and observation, John assumed that he would have chosen to continue with chemistry or expand on his hobby of detective work. But, as Holmes let a rare, genuine smile flit across his face as the audience got to their feet and continued applauding, John understood. He had focused all of his observational prowess on the notes before him and the orchestra around him, inexplicably producing raw emotion from something processed through his logical sieve of a mind.

Holmes, for his part, looked as far from logical as John had ever seen him: as he turned to gesture to the orchestra in thanks, John noticed the deep blush spreading from his cheekbones to where his collarbone disappeared beneath his shirt.

John, clarinet in lap, clapping as loud as any audience member, was struck with the urge to follow that blush with his finger, to see if that long neck — usually so pale, now tinged a breathtaking pink — was as warm and soft as it looked.

His clapping stuttered, and he looked to the side, smothering a feeling he told himself was embarrassment.

That’s when he noticed that Andrew West was missing.

“Shit!” His exclamation was inaudible over the fourth round of applause as Holmes traipsed on and off the stage again with Tilson-Thomas. John looked around desperately for West, and he saw something that turned his blood cold.

The circle of light surrounding Holmes was flickering, and that brilliant man, the man who supposedly noticed everything, hadn’t realized it yet.

“SHERLOCK!”

John’s shout was loud enough to pervade the applause, and Sherlock whirled around in annoyance to see John staring with horror at the point above his head. John saw Sherlock’s eyes follow his: the stage light above him quivered and swung before disconnecting from its fastenings with a loud groan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone interested, [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuzsFa5l0d4) is a video of the violin concerto that has featured throughout the last three chapters.


	4. Barbaro

John had always prided himself on his fast reflexes.

He knew it was difficult to find a professional career in music if you didn’t have them. All of that key pressing, calculated hits of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, not to mention the sightreading. John prided himself  and relied on all of them whenever he put his instrument to his lips.

He had never felt more sluggish than when the stage light above Sherlock fell.

He felt as if he were watching it from the other end of a long tunnel: everything else in the hall narrowed down to the light, sparks flying from its severed cords as it tumbled down. He vaguely wondered how much it weighed: 40 kilos? 45? And it was on a direct path to Sherlock’s head 20 feet below. John tried to make his limbs move — to do what, he wasn’t sure — but the air around his body felt like marshmallow. The applause still rang in his ears, the first of several loud gasps beginning the audience’s new movement: horror.

Thankfully, Sherlock’s reflexes were still in working order. He hardly looked up before diving to the right, landing in a tight ball with his violin held safely aloft as the light smashed directly where he’d been standing.

Screams echoed throughout the hall. Several string players rushed to Sherlock, Anderson included. Tilson-Thomas completely lost his calm façade, hand covering his mouth in shock. John couldn’t see Sherlock around the backs of the other orchestra members, and despite having seen him dodge the light, he was gripped with fear. He put his clarinet on his chair and set into motion, fellow woodwinds not following nor, it seemed to him, even noticing: Henry and Sally stood with their mouths open, agape; Molly had her arm around a shaken Mrs. Hudson.

John pushed through the violas, not bothering to excuse himself; everyone seemed too frozen to notice him shoving his way to the front of the stage. He reached the circle surrounding Sherlock and eased his way between two violinists, fearing the worst. What if the light had grazed Sherlock’s leg? Somehow struck his head as he made his narrow escape? He tried to push the macabre thoughts away as he broke through the circle and into the scene.

Sherlock was fine. He was still crouched, examining the light fixture. His fingers darted around the cords sticking out of the frame like snakes from Medusa’s head, and John recognized his facial expression as calculating and curious. Everyone else kept their distance from the light, eying it uneasily. John felt a burst of annoyance and anger: here he had been worrying about the man, and he was intently studying the thing that had almost just killed him. Audience members, upon seeing that there hadn’t been a dramatic death after all, had started to file out of the hall on the urging of the ushers. Some craned their necks to get a look at the stage. “That was the most exciting concert I’ve been to in quite a while,” remarked a middle-aged woman. “The music was too damn modern,” grumbled her companion. John rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the narrowly-avoided disaster in front of him.

He approached the destroyed light fixture, wincing at the way it had damaged the stage: there was a small crater indicating the impact point. John’s stomach rolled at the thought of what it could’ve done to a human skull. His attention shifted to the owner of that skull in question.

John cleared his throat. “Er, Hol— Sherlock.”

Sherlock quirked a smile at the sound of his name, eyes never leaving the stage light. The friendly gesture barely tempered him snapping “I’ve already been offered tea, cold water, a biscuit, and a tissue, and it’s been approximately 2 minutes since the light fell. So, no, I don’t need whatever you’re about to offer.”

“I’m not offering you anything. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t horribly injured, or something.”

Sherlock’s eyebrow quirked. “Seeing as you’re the one who alerted me to the danger, I assume you saw the whole thing and knew…” He trailed off as he finally looked up at John. His eyes narrowed and he stood straight up.

The look of pure loathing that suddenly appeared on Sherlock’s face made John’s stomach sink. “Should I have offered you something? You could be in shock. I’m not a doctor, but—”

A clipped voice sounded behind John, cutting off his panicked rambling. “Brother dear.”

John belatedly realized that Sherlock’s angry look was directed at the man standing behind him. He whirled around and almost lost his balance, but by that point the man had already moved around him and rendered the quasi-pirouette useless.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock spat.

The first thing John noticed about the man was his clothing. An orchestral performance was an occasion for audience members to dress formally, but a three-piece suit was a bit ridiculous. If John hadn’t recognized the name Mycroft, it would have taken him a long time to find the resemblance: he only unearthed a glimpse of something Holmesian in the man’s sharp, alert eyes.

Mycroft didn’t notice or, more likely, didn’t care about John’s obvious scrutiny. “How many times are you going to nearly die in a single year? Surely this is your new record.”

“You liked the concert, then.”

Mycroft’s smile was little more than a baring of teeth. “And what makes you say that?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Because you didn’t immediately tell me how horrible it was. Really, you’re getting slow in your old age.”

Mycroft exhaled loudly through his nose, hand tightening on the handle of his umbrella. “It was... tolerable.”

Sherlock’s lips pursed. John looked on in fascination: it was like watching two birds of prey squabble in midair.

“It’s probably for the best you weren’t killed,” Mycroft said offhandedly, “People might start to get suspicious, so soon after Lester.”

With a sharp jolt, John remembered. “Oh my god.”

Sherlock, mouth opened to make a rejoinder to Mycroft, snapped his attention to John. “What?”

“West. West is missing. I forgot because of the light—”

Sherlock grabbed John by the wrist and pulled him away from the growing crowd of musicians at the front of the stage, ignoring Mycroft’s irritated objection. He strode through the stage door, John having no choice but to follow, and spun around as soon as the door closed behind them. “Did you see him leave?” His voice was fierce, and his large hand was still wrapped all the way around John’s wrist.

“No, he was there at the end of movement 3 and gone by the fourth round of applause. He must have just slipped off.”

“And you didn’t see him?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

John felt irritation creep up his spine. “He must’ve been very quick.”

“John, you saw something, you’re just not remembering because the average human brain—”

“I said no.” John jerked his wrist free of Sherlock’s grasp.

The violinist stepped back, stung. “I’ve offended you.”

“Yeah, good deduction there.” John felt a furious half-smile creep onto his face.

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, that’s a first.”

Sherlock’s head tilted slightly to the left as he looked straight into John’s eyes. “I see. You’re mad I didn’t automatically believe you.”

“Well, why would you? Me being the ‘average human brain.’”

“Statistically speaking, the human brain’s ability for recall is highly selective. You definitely saw West one way or another, your brain just chooses not to realize it.”

Even after just five days of knowing Sherlock, John recognized this. It was the beginning of a diatribe.

“I, of course,” Sherlock continued, still staring at John, “have trained myself to abolish parts of this selectivity. Instead, I label incoming stimuli as important or unimportant. You really shouldn’t be offended—”

John’s ears pricked up: underneath the steady drone of Sherlock’s voice, another sound had caught his attention.

“—because the executive center in the human memory—”

“Sherlock.”

“—the slave system of short term memory has such a low capacity—”

“Do you hear that?”

“—makes it hard for normal people to be observant—”

“SHERLOCK.” John’s shout finally won silence and some astonishment from the other man. “If you’d shut up, I was just doing a bit of observing. I hear something odd.”

They stood in silence for a second, and sure enough, there was a gurgling sound coming from behind a covered set of timpani at the end of the hall.

Sherlock looked in the direction of the sound’s source, then back to John. John nodded, and they began to creep along the hallway.

John prided himself in his lack of superstition just as much as his fast reflexes, but as he moved toward the set of timpani, he felt dread seep into his bones. The closer he got, the more his body screamed at him to turn around, go home, ignore the gurgling that was getting louder by the second.

The dread was incomparable to what was behind the drums.

Andrew West was supine on the concrete floor, white tuxedo shirt soaked red. His fingers covered his neck and he seemed to be weakly trying to press down. Every breath caused blood to spurt between his fingers; his breaths were wet and gasping, the horrible rattling noise explained.

John’s vision flashed white, and he was suddenly on his knees next to West. “We have to apply pressure,” he said, voice strangely calm. His shaking hand didn’t feel like it belonged to him; it had moved to cover West’s limp one and had pressed down of its own volition. John could feel the blood grow sticky between his fingers.

Sherlock didn’t respond; he had his phone out. John could hear him talking to an emergency operator:  “Yes, we have a man at Barbican Concert Hall, backstage, his throat’s been cut.”

John didn’t think he’d have had the breath to explain the situation; his eyes were fixed on Andrew struggling to take in air through the blood in his throat, eyes glassing over. John pulled off his tuxedo jacket and pressed it to West’s neck, barely covering the jagged wound.

Sherlock remained standing.

John looked up, arranging the jacket into a tighter wad of fabric. “Sherlock, help me.”

“John… the murderer might still be in the building, we should—”

“Sherlock, god damn it, help me, please.” John hated the crack in his voice, hated how useless he felt.

“John.” Sherlock’s voice was, for the first time, gentle. He crouched next to John. “He’s already gone.”

John had been trying to ignore it, but Sherlock’s words forced him to acknowledge that the gurgling had stopped. In a way, the silence was even more horrible. West’s eyes were open and empty; John remembered the fear he had seen in them just hours before. John couldn’t accept it; he pushed harder on Andrew’s neck, ignoring the warm blood smearing on his fingers.

Sherlock put his hand on top of John’s and made to pull it away from West, but John swatted it away. He could feel bile rising into his mouth. White dots swam in his vision.

Other members of the orchestra had started to file backstage and, seeing them crouched behind the timpani, had come to see what was happening. John barely registered their cries of shock and disgust; his hands were limp on top of the dead man’s neck. The paramedics arrived shortly after, and Sherlock insistently pulled on John’s fingers: this time, John didn’t resist. Mike’s face floated in front of him and he felt Molly pulling him away from the scene. Sounds were muffled, words were meaningless, everything was happening underwater except for one repeating thought:

You said you had saved him.

 

* * *

 

The cracks in John’s ceiling kept changing.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying in bed, but the weak morning sun had begun to leak in under his blinds. Every time John went to count, the number of cracks was different. Some of the cracks were nothing but tricks of the light; some belonged to bigger fault lines, and John either counted them or not and then forgot if he had or hadn’t. Futility, his mind whispered.

Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw blood beading between his fingers, the life ebbing from West. He saw Mike nearly dragging him to the bathroom to wash the blood off his hands, hauling him into a cab and then walking him to his door with the promise that he’d call the next day.

The thought of Mike’s concern forced some energy into John. He rolled over to check his phone on the nightstand: dead. His fingers scrabbled with the charger cord; Mike might get worried if he tried to call and didn’t receive an answer. He plugged in his phone and let it sit until it could power on.

The screen flashed with the time: it was only six. John had four missed calls from the same unfamiliar number. His eyebrows furrowed: he had Mike’s, Molly’s, and Lestrade’s numbers in his phone. No one else in London knew him well enough to call. It was probably the press, wanting the full story of what had happened the night before. Nauseated, he set the phone back down.

After an entire night of fighting his exhaustion, John’s eyes were drooping outside of his control. Despite the scarlet images in his mind, sleep was tempting. He willed himself to stop counting the cracks. Rolling onto his side, he finally allowed his eyes to close.

The loud ring of his phone made them fly open again.

He wanted to ignore it, but he knew it could be Mike. Sitting up, he squinted at the screen: the same unknown number. He groaned, pressing the “ignore call” button. Hopefully, whoever it was on the other line would get the message and leave him alone. He rolled over again, cocooning himself in the blankets and feeling… ok. For the first time in the eight hours he’d been home, he felt as though he could get some nightmare-free rest, if only because he was thoroughly exhausted. His eyes shut again, and this time he could feel the soft tendrils of sleep start to wrap around him.

He jerked back awake from his half-slumber to the sound of knocking. Bloody thin walls: he could always hear the neighbors tramping in and out, and now he could hear their early visitor knocking much louder than was necessary at six in the morning. He pressed his pillow firmly over his ears.

The knocking continued. The neighbors must be heavy sleepers, he thought in annoyance.

The knocks became more insistent, heavier and slower. A possibility entered John’s fatigue-mellowed brain: his door.

His door. The knocks were coming from his door. And they weren’t making any indication of stopping. There was a 30 second pause before a fresh wave of thumps resounded throughout the room. If John didn’t answer soon, the knocker would either give up (tempting) or the neighbors would ostracize him or have his head (not so tempting). When yet another round of raps started, John threw his feet over the side of the bed. He had to forgo his morning stretch, grabbing his ratty terrycloth bathrobe to present some level of dignity.

As he started towards the front door, trudging along in his house slippers, he nearly stopped when a thought ran through his head. What if the person at the door was a member of the press, the one who had been calling him? A very brave member of the press to come to his door, if there was one. Well, John reasoned as he continued towards the door, he’d have to get rid of them one way or another. He would shoo away whoever it was with some well-placed comment about his lawyer, and then go back to lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying not to hate himself.

He opened the door to find an annoyed-looking Sherlock Holmes, hand half-raised to knock again.

John’s neurons fired up past the sleepy fog. Sherlock at his door, looking much too awake and put-together for the early hour.

John felt suddenly self-conscious that he wasn’t wearing any pants beneath his robe.

“Sherlock— what are you doing here?”

“You weren’t answering my texts,” Sherlock said as though it were obvious.

“Texts, I didn’t see any texts, just calls.” John pulled the bathrobe more tightly around his disheveled frame, eying Sherlock’s immaculate outfit.

“Yes, I did resort to calling. Awful. Not that it did any good.” There was a hint of testiness to Sherlock’s voice.

The sleep clearing from John more and more by the second, he had begun to realize that something was off about this. “How’d you get my phone number? Or my address?”

“Mike.”

John let out a groan of disbelief, hand rubbing the scruff on his chin. “It was Mycroft.”

“It was not!” Sherlock became petulant in a millisecond. “Honestly, how hard do you think it was for me to get them from Mike? I was the only one with you when Andrew died—”

The previous night flew back to John at full speed, hitting the knot of panic in his chest like a sledgehammer on an icepick. “Don’t.”

“He seemed to think that we could empathize with each other, however that works.”

John swayed slightly in the door frame. “But…” he gulped down the knot, “but that’s not the real reason you got them from Mike.”

Sherlock gave him a look. John read it perfectly, and continued “I get it. Sherlock Holmes and empathize… not in the same sentence.”

Sherlock’s mouth twisted, but he continued on a different line. “The murder is still fresh in our minds. We need to discuss it.”

“You already gave a statement to the police.”

“Please,” Sherlock dismissed with a flick of his hand. “Like the police will be able to do anything.”

“What can we do that they can’t?”

“Separate meaningless stimuli from useful knowledge, observe the important. In short, actually solve the crime.”

John gave Sherlock a stern look. “I’m a musician.”

“As am I.” Sherlock sounded amused.

“I can’t play…” John struggled to find the word “... vigilante! I’ve never even held a gun before.”

“I’m not surprised. This isn’t America.”

“I know nothing about forensics, weapons—”

“Where you lack, I can supply. For example, I can say with one hundred percent certainty that West was killed with a large knife, no serrated edge, so the killer doesn’t use a hunting knife. The style of the cut indicates familiarity with butchering or surgery—”

John’s stomach churned in protest, and he turned around and rushed to the kitchen. He retched over the sink, hands clinging to the counter: West’s eyes were swimming in front of him, the fearful ones he had seen before the concert and the dead ones he had seen just an hour later. His stomach had nothing in it other than bile, so John retched fruitlessly, squeezing his eyes shut against the morbid images.

After a minute he stopped, heavy exhales fogging up the side of the stainless steel sink. He used his right hand to turn on the sink and splash cold water on his face— his left hand was useless, shaking at his side. After a few splashes, he registered that he wasn’t alone in the room. Sherlock had followed him inside, of course he had.

Eyes still shut, John asked “Do you still think I’d make a good sidekick?”

“You’re in shock.” Sherlock sounded matter-of-fact.

“You’re bloody well right,” John said past gritted teeth. “I let Andrew die. I think I deserve to be in shock.”

The only response was the sound of Sherlock shifting into one of the kitchen chairs.

John sighed, still hunched over the sink. “Look, as much as I love entertaining before 7 AM, maybe you should leave.”

“You didn’t,” Sherlock murmured.

“What?” John wiped his mouth and turned around.

Sherlock stared at him. “You didn’t let him die.”

John took a deep, shuddering breath. “I felt him bleed out under my hands.”

“By the time we got to him, it was too late. He had already lost too much blood.”

John remembered the puddle he had knelt in; he had never seen that much blood before. “We were arguing… we would have heard him sooner—”

“The second West’s throat was cut, there was no saving him.”

“You said I had saved him! Before the concert!” John didn’t realize he had raised his voice until it resonated in the dim kitchen. “I was supposed to watch him. I got distracted, and—” John struggled to keep his voice steady “and now he’s dead.”

Sherlock’s eyes were softer than John had ever seen them. They looked out of place juxtaposed with the sharp lines of his face. “There was no way to predict it. John, please, it’s not your fault.”

John braced himself against the counter. “Why are you being so kind to me?”

Something in Sherlock’s face closed, flashing halfway back to coldness. “You’re not boring.”

John scoffed. “And that makes me special.”

“Yes,” Sherlock blurted.

John looked up in surprise, but Sherlock wore a neutral expression, suddenly fascinated with the grain of the kitchen table. There was an uncomfortable silence before John cleared his throat. “Tea?”

Sherlock shrugged, and John took it as an affirmative, setting two mugs on the counter as he filled the kettle. He busied himself getting out the teabags, milk, and sugar as Sherlock remained still behind him. John could almost hear the man’s brain working.

“Wouldn’t it make you feel better, to bring West’s killer to justice?”

John’s hand hesitated on the carton of milk. “Yes.”

He knew that if he turned around, Sherlock would be wearing his victory smirk. “That should be reason enough.”

John poured hot water into the mugs, left hand steady again. “I have certain ground rules.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t want to break the law, unless it’s warranted— milk and sugar?”

“Two spoons of sugar.”

John added them to the tea and then set the mug in front of Sherlock, who was fidgeting and obviously had something to say. John waited. Sherlock took a perfunctory sip of tea, smacking his lips before finally blurting “What’s your definition of ‘warranted’?”

“Oh no, whatever you have in mind—”

 

* * *

 

 John was not sulking.

He was sitting outside of the morgue in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, arms crossed and slouching in his chair, but he was definitely not sulking.

Sherlock using the lab at Bart’s was questionable, but having access to the morgue? When Sherlock had told John his plan back in John’s flat, John had told him no automatically. The morals were fuzzy enough, but he wasn’t sure how he’d handle seeing West’s body so soon after his death.

“But you won’t have to come into the morgue! There’s more to be done afterward. It’s just the first stop.”

John had grudgingly agreed; now he wanted to kick himself. He had been waiting for five minutes, which turned into ten minutes, jiggling his foot up and down as people in white coats swept by without paying him any notice. After fifteen minutes, John jumped up with an exasperated sigh and strode into the morgue.

Sherlock looked up in surprise, magnifying glass hovering over the mangled neck of Andrew West. John braced for the nausea, entire body tense and eyes scrunched closed, but it never came. He hesitantly opened his eyes to see Sherlock still hovering over the body, looking unalarmed but curious. “Can I help you?” Sherlock inquired.

“Sitting out in the damn hallway… I feel like a dog tied up in front of a café.”

“Interesting comparison, morgue and a café.”

John’s face scrunched. “Stop talking, now.”

“By all means.” Sherlock resumed looking at the edges of the cut through the glass.

John shifted from foot to foot, looking around the room. The sterile whiteness offered little to look at, and he didn’t feel much better than he had in the hallway. Not to mention there was now a corpse in his immediate vicinity.

“What are you trying to find?” John asked, needing to occupy himself.

“I had a general idea of the type of blade used from what I saw last night, but I think I’ve narrowed it down to…” Sherlock peered even closer at the severed flesh. “…one.”

“Well?”

“I’ve written an essay on the varying sharpness of kitchen blades. This cut is almost identical to that of one in the murder of a celebrity chef that happened a few years back. I’m sure you remember: Scotland Yard—” the words were almost spit with contempt— “thought a rival chef was the perpetrator. They confiscated the knives of nearly 20 high-end London restaurateurs but failed to check the most obvious ones of all. The murdered chef’s own knives were the ones used. They were practically the sharpest in the city. It was his sous chef who killed him, of course. Jealous lover, textbook.”

John found Sherlock’s train of thought dizzying. “What does this have to do with West?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’ve told you they were practically the sharpest knives in the entire city. Which means…”

“They’re expensive.”

“Exactly. They’re not common; he could only afford them because of the money garnered from his celebrity,” Sherlock said distastefully. “Idiot.”

“So that means our murderer has a lot of money.”

“Good,” Sherlock said, sounding proud, “Ridiculously wealthy. If he’s cunning, which he’s proven himself to be on two separate occasions, he bought the knife specifically for a murder knowing that he would have to dispose of it afterward. He has enough money to buy an enormously expensive knife for a one-time use.”

“That seems… illogical.”

“Hardly, he didn’t want to risk the knife being dull enough to only leave West maimed. I’m guessing he knew he’d only have to use it as a failsafe, in case his reed trick didn’t work. He doesn’t like getting his hands dirty, but he will if his more… inventive methods fall through.”

Sherlock snapped his magnifying glass closed with satisfaction, throwing the sheet back over West’s pale face.

Something had been nagging John as he thought about the murderer. “That light that almost fell on you last night. That wasn’t an accident.”

Sherlock’s face lit up. “I was wondering when you’d catch on.”

John’s stomach sank: he had been hoping for Sherlock to deny it. “Why do you seem happy about it? That means someone’s trying to kill you.”

“If it’s the same person who murdered Murphy and West, then I encourage it. It’ll make it easier for me to find them. That’s our next stop, by the way. Hope you don’t mind going to the concert hall on your day off.” Sherlock was already halfway out the door.

John gaped at his back before setting off after him.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock Holmes has a death wish, thought John.

They were sitting in a cab headed towards Barbican, Sherlock’s fingers flying over his phone’s keyboard. He was excited to hear that someone was trying to murder him. He had seemed fascinated rather than alarmed the night before, more concerned with examining the light than realizing that it had almost crushed his skull. And now he was eager to return to the scene of his almost-murder and West’s actual murder. Loath as he was to admit it, John knew Sherlock was on to something. The fact that he had deduced that much from the incision on Andrew’s neck was a sign that he might be right: he could solve this faster than the police.

As they got out in front of the Barbican Centre (Sherlock paying this time, to John’s satisfaction) John asked “Are we actually going to walk into an active crime scene?”

“Hardly active,” Sherlock said as they walked through the sliding doors, “The police will have packed up by now. I doubt they found anything useful.”

“They’ve probably locked everything up.”

“Oh, undoubtedly. Anything happening in there this weekend has been canceled.”

“How do you expect to get in, then?”

One side of Sherlock’s mouth pulled up in a smile. “I made friends with the right people.”

With this cryptic statement, he led John past the two cinemas and into the lower floor of the centre. It was completely abandoned, apart from a lone janitor standing by the musician’s entrance. He looked up at the sound of footsteps, grin filling his face when he saw them. “Sherlock!”

“Hello, Dave,” Sherlock greeted as the janitor shook his hand fiercely. “Have the police all gone?”

“Oh, yeah, they were gone before I even finished cleaning last night.”

Sherlock gave a pointed look at John. “Ah. Ever vigilant, Scotland Yard.”

“You would know,” chuckled Dave, then abruptly blurted “Lord, what am I saying? Sorry. So sorry.”

John looked at Sherlock, confused. The friendly expression he had worn a minute earlier was now strained. “It’s quite alright.”

It didn’t sound alright to John.

“Anyway,” Dave said, a little more cautiously, “you can just go right in. Ignore the yellow tape, but try not to step in the blood. I’m not allowed to clean that up yet.”

“Thanks,” John said hastily because, as usual, Sherlock was striding through the door already.

They wound their way through backstage, passing the timpani set cordoned off with crime scene tape. “Didn’t you want to look?” John asked.

“No, that’s not why we’re here.”

John was secretly relieved. Although he had just spent a fair amount of time with West’s corpse, he wasn’t sure how he’d handle being back where he’d watched West die.

The stage was unlit, the only illumination coming from the dim running lights under the chairs in the aisle. The light from backstage was cut off as the door closed softly, and John struggled half-blind up the stairs to where Sherlock stood.

Or, where he thought he stood. John crashed right into something solid and warm as he reached the stage. Grunting in surprise, Sherlock grabbed his arms to keep him from falling backwards down the stairs.

In the dark, John couldn’t see how close they were, but he could feel Sherlock’s sharp exhale on his cheek.

John jerked away from his grip a little faster than he meant to, grateful for the darkness: he could feel heat spreading up his neck. “Wouldn’t this be a bit more useful with the lights on?”

“They put the lights on a timer. I brought this.” Sherlock’s sentence was punctuated with a click, and soft yellow light flooded the stage courtesy of a small lantern.

The stage light was still in the same place it had been last night.

“No yellow tape?” inquired John.

“They think it’s an accident.” Sherlock knelt down, shining the lantern on the frayed end of the stage light that had once been connected to power lines.

John knelt a safe distance away from him. He waited for some exclamation of discovery, but Sherlock was subdued. Unusually so, John thought. “So… what Dave said—”

“It’s to do with the cocaine.”

John reeled back. “What?”

“I assume Mike informed you of my drug habits.”

John didn’t see any use in protesting. “Yeah. I wasn’t sure how much of it is true.”

“Mike may be a gossip, but he doesn’t embellish. I suppose that’s fortunate for me.”

“How does Dave know about it?”

“He and I were… acquaintances when I was going through my ‘phase,’ as Mycroft likes to call it.”

“How did he get a job here?”

“I may have helped.”

John’s mouth quirked. “What about his police comment?”

“We had a few run-ins with them, as addicts living on the street tend to do.”

John stopped talking. The swishing of Sherlock’s coat as he shifted around the light did little to relieve the silence.

“You’ve got questions.” Sherlock issued it as a statement rather than an inquiry.

John turned to him. The lantern shone under his face, casting ghostly shadows above his cheekbones and in the hollows of his eyes. John was reminded of a skull. “You have your history, I have mine. I don’t need to know anything.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you really don’t have a problem with someone who plays the violin as an alternative to getting high?”

John reached for the right words. “I’m saying it’s… fine.”

Sherlock seemed to revert back to analyzing John before turning towards the fallen light once again. “You should know that you don’t have your own ‘private history,’ at least, not around me.”

John got to his feet. “Prove it.”

Sherlock’s eyes flashed in the shadows with their familiar manic excitement. “Are you sure?”

John raised his arms in invitation. “Go ahead.”

Sherlock sprang up. He looked John up and down, just a cursory glance, before he began. “The way you hold yourself says military, and although you’ve chosen not to pursue it as a career, you were clearly trained. Military school, I’m guessing. The lack of contact you have with family suggests that they disapprove of you. Your chosen career is so obviously disparate from what you were raised to be that it must be your profession that they disapprove of.”

“How do you know about my family?”

“Mike picked you up from the airport and helped you move your things to your new flat. That’s usually reserved for a family member, and although I suppose it’s possible you just don’t have family in London, you hardly ever check your phone. People with close relationships often check their phones: constant contact, one of the perks of the modern age,” Sherlock concluded with a wry twist of his mouth.

John looked incredulously at Sherlock, torn between awe, embarrassment, and anger.

“Well, was anything wrong?” The smug look on Sherlock’s face indicated that he knew nothing had been wrong.

“No, it was… brilliant.” John didn’t realize he was going to use the word until it had left his mouth.

Sherlock’s eyes widened. “That’s not how you reacted the first time I deduced you.”

John snorted. “Well, at that point you only guessed something that could have been confirmed by Googling my name, so.”

Sherlock paused. “I did look you up after. On the Internet, I mean.”

John’s left hand twitched. “What did you think?”

Sherlock had abandoned the pretense of examining the light, staring directly at John. “Colburn School. Impressive. The acceptance rate there is about fifteen percent?”

“Eleven percent,” John corrected. If Sherlock was allowed to be smug all the time, John deserved his own moment in the sun every once in a while.

“Then, straight out of music school, you auditioned into the Los Angeles Philharmonic and placed second.”

“I don’t like being reminded of that.” John didn’t mention it to many people, but he thought the former principal clarinetist of the LA Phil had been a complete cad.

“You didn’t like the principal.”

“That came up when you searched me?” John asked, alarmed.

“No,” Sherlock said with a cunning smile, “I saw it just now.”

“Am I that easy to read?”

“Everyone is.”

The phrase hung in the air, sounding more menacing to John than Sherlock had probably intended. Sherlock continued “Beat that player out the next round of auditions, principal clarinetist of the LA Phil at the age of 24. You kept your spot for more than a decade.”

John felt his fist clench and unclench. Sherlock glanced down at it and opened his mouth. John raised his hand. “Spare me, please. We know what happens next.”

Sherlock’s mouth clamped shut, and he nodded stiffly.

John knelt back down to stare at the light, futilely hoping to notice something Sherlock hadn’t.

“One bad concert doesn’t necessitate a year of self-inflicted exile,” Sherlock blurted from above him.

John sighed; he had known Sherlock wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t feel angry: in fact, the only strong emotion he had at the moment was that of being incredibly out of place. He was standing on a dark stage investigating a murder. John had only watched this sort of thing on television, and even then it had seemed far-fetched. And, strangest of all, this man, who had shown no kindness towards some of the best people in the entire music industry, was trying to start a personal conversation with him. With screw-up, trembling hands John Watson. As incredible as that was, John knew where the conversation was headed. He needed to put a stop to it now.

“It was more than just a ‘bad concert,’ it was-” John struggled to find the words to describe how he had felt that night: his frustration when his instrument seemingly stopped working, his embarrassment at being so exposed at the front of the stage, his despair at the respect he saw leaving the eyes of his colleagues, lost forever. He inhaled deeply, trying to quell his anxiety.

“It was horrible, yes, but it didn’t mean the end of your career.” Sherlock sounded exasperated.

John took a steadier breath, looking up at the dramatic figure of Sherlock undercut by the light of the lantern. “You think I’m stupid for leaving.”

“What?”

“You think I’m an idiot for quitting my job with the LA Phil.”

Sherlock was silent. John groaned. “You can just say it, everyone else has—”

“Everyone? Mike?” Sherlock seemed skeptical.

“Well, with Mike it was always kind of an implied thing,” conceded John, “but even Mary told me off and said I was a right idiot. It won’t be any worse coming from you.”

Sherlock tilted his head downward, casting his eyes into shadow to look at John’s upturned face. “Mary?”

“Oh, er…” John didn’t know why he was finding this so awkward. “Girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend, I suppose. We played together in LA.”

“Girlfriend?” Sherlock scoffed.

John felt a small bite of anger at that. “What, you think I’m not good enough to get a girlfriend? I don’t suppose you have one.” Okay, John admitted to himself as soon as he stopped speaking, that was cruel.

Sherlock seemed unperturbed. “Not really my area.”

John tried to ignore his accelerating heartbeat, feigning nonchalance when he asked “What is your ‘area’ then?”

“Married to the music.”

It was John’s turn to scoff. “Of course.”

Sherlock stood for a beat more, then knelt back down across the light from John, paying attention to the impact marks around the fixture. “You’re not, you know.”

“Hm?”

Sherlock seemed to be looking at everything but John’s eyes. “Stupid. You’re not stupid.”

“High praise, coming from you.”

“I’ve said it before! I also told you this morning that you aren’t boring.”

John almost laughed at how indignant Sherlock sounded. “Well, yes, but I was half-asleep and you practically broke into my flat to take me on a fun outing to the morgue, so forgive me if it didn’t seem exactly genuine.”

“Alright, fair.”

John rubbed his hand on the back of his neck, rocking slightly on his toes. “Er, for what it’s worth, thanks.”

Sherlock nodded.

John looked back at the stage light. “Find anything?”

“No.” Sherlock’s eyebrows furrowed. “It’s almost too clean. The light must have been partially disconnected before the concert, and some sort of device was used to let it drop at precisely the right time, but…” He had his magnifying glass out again. “I can’t see any sign of one.”

“Did you see anything last night?”

“I didn’t get much of a chance, between the group of fretting mums and the murder.”

John gave him a stern glance. “You were almost killed. Anyone would fret.”

“Well, in this case, their concern may have caused more harm than good.” Sherlock snapped shut his magnifying glass with a huff. He stood straight, scooped up the lantern, and walked in the direction of the stage door without preamble.

“Where are we going next?” John asked, catching up to him before the stage was plunged back into darkness.

“There’s nothing more to be done today,” Sherlock said crossly, “There wasn’t any new evidence here, so I have nothing to analyze.”

John felt oddly disappointed. He now had the bedsit to look forward to, just him and his thoughts and the ghost of Andrew West to keep him company.

Dave locked the stage door behind them, and they climbed the stairs back to street level. Sherlock, with his uncanny ability to hail taxis, had a cab idling in front of them in less than a minute. “After you.”

“As much as I like taking cabs everywhere, it’s quite a bit of money and I haven’t started giving lessons, so…” John gestured in the direction of the tube station.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’ll pay.”

“I couldn’t let you—”

“Get in the cab, John.” Sherlock’s voice broached no argument.

Soon they were flying by St. Paul’s. “You didn’t mention if I’m on the way or not,” John pointed out.

“You’re not,” Sherlock said simply.

“Where do you live, then?”

A beat. “Baker Street.”

“You mean… near Regent’s Park? That Baker Street?”

“That’s the one.”

“How in the world…” Sherlock was a moderately-paid bachelor; John doubted even two of those could afford that flat. “This one has to be Mycroft.” Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, and John knew he was right. “Does your brother have access to the entire income of the British government?”

Sherlock smirked. “Something like that.”

John couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.

Soon, they arrived at the small block of flats, and John went to get out. Sherlock put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“I’ll be along to collect you at the same time tomorrow,” Sherlock said. John looked at his hand on his shoulder, and Sherlock, noticing, withdrew it quickly. “Do try to be dressed this time.”

John rolled his eyes but nodded. As he got out of the taxi and watched it drive away, he couldn’t help but feel excitement blooming in his chest. He might have to spend time alone in his tiny flat, but tomorrow he was back in the game.

Pathetic, he thought.

 

* * *

 

It was 10 minutes before Sherlock was due to “collect” him the following morning, and John was fully dressed, standing in his bathroom. He had slept from the afternoon of the previous day until the morning, exhaustion propelling him to an early slumber and anticipation rousing him when the sun rose.

The question was: what was the anticipation for?

He examined himself in the mirror. He looked smart but practical as usual, and he wondered what Sherlock would think. Sherlock, who had worn a perfectly-fitted suit every day John had seen him. Granted, that only came to a total of less than seven days…

“This is ridiculous,” he said to his reflection. He had been in London for less than a week, and now he was on his second consecutive day of murder-solving. Maybe the murder-solving wasn’t the most abnormal aspect: maybe it was that there had been a murder at all. Welcome to London, he thought grimly. Although dressed and clean-shaven, he was on edge. There was a wild look in his eyes that unnerved him when he looked in the mirror. He hadn’t slept particularly well.

He had a dream about standing naked in the center of the dark stage. He supposed that it could have been anywhere, a dark bedroom, an alley late at night; in the dream, however, his mind had automatically supplied stage. So there John had stood, sans lantern, sans clothes, and sans Sherlock as far as he could tell in the dark. Then, a finger had pressed down lightly on the nape of his neck.

It should have been terrifying. It had all the good makings for a horrible nightmare. But the finger moved down his spine, lightly tracing his vertebrae, and dream-John had shivered in what was most definitely pleasure. The finger had been replaced by a wet mouth, and by then real life John had become interested as well.

John had woken alone with a growing wet spot on his pants and a lingering sense of guilt. Why had it been on the stage? Who had been with him in the dark? They hadn’t spoken in the dream. It could have been anyone, someone with long, delicate, talented fingers…

It was the woman he had smiled at in Tesco the other day. Yeah, John could see that. The stage was just a coincidence.

He adjusted his collar, which suddenly felt much tighter.

He had time to make tea before Sherlock arrived, he decided. He flipped off the light, walked through the hallway into the kitchen, and—

“What the HELL—”

Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table, looking very much at home.

“How—” John took a calming breath, “How did you get into my flat?”

Sherlock shrugged. “Door was unlocked.”

“Mine might have been, but I know for a fact the front one wasn’t.” John shared a front hallway with his upstairs neighbors.

“Doris let me in.”

John sighed. “Who’s Doris?”

Sherlock looked amused. “Do I really know your neighbors better than you already? I’ve only been here twice.”

“And I’ve been here for less than a week— Okay, you’re trying to distract me. You can’t just waltz into my house whenever you want, there’s a thing called knocking.”

“I tried that yesterday, you took ages. Now, can we leave?”

John realized that his hands had involuntarily moved to his hips. He gave Sherlock his best glare. “I’m having tea.”

“We don’t have time.”

“Oh, yes we do. And while I have it, you’re going to tell me exactly what the plan is today. No suprise morgue visits.”

If anyone could sip their tea angrily, it was Sherlock Holmes. Every time his lips touched the rim of the mug, he took a noisy slurp, setting his mug down on the table before picking it back up and repeating the process a few seconds later.

John refused to take the bait, sitting calmly across the table from him and chewing on a biscuit. “Well?”

“Well what?” Sherlock snapped.

“I’m waiting.”

“You’ve got crumbs around your mouth. Messy eater, that’s a sign of—”

“Uh uh. You can’t distract me this time. I know you like being all enigmatic with your deductions and your plans and your… suits, and—” Christ, had John just said that? He felt his face burn. “—whatever else you do, but spare me the drama.”

Sherlock tapped his fingers against the table, staring at John. John stared right back at him with raised, expectant eyebrows. Finally, Sherlock heaved a great sigh. “You’re ridiculously obstinate.”

“It’s one of my best qualities.”

Sherlock looked like he was about to contradict him, but seemed to think better of it. “We’re going to interview West’s fiancée.”

John frowned. “Are you sure? He’s only just died, she’s probably too upset.”

Sherlock threw his hands up in the air. “See! I shouldn’t have told you, I knew you would get worried about human sensitivity, or mourning, or whatever other tosh you’re going to bring up.”

“Tosh?” John shook his head. “Sherlock, have you ever lost someone?”

Sherlock hesitated. “Of course.”

“How would you feel if someone called your pain ‘tosh’?”

“People die, it happens. There’s no use crying over something that’s irrevocable.”

John took a sip of his lukewarm tea, looking over to the morning light streaming in through the window; he was once again questioning whether Sherlock was even human. When he had told John not to blame himself for West’s death, John had seen a glimpse of someone that could empathize. But now, he felt like he was back at the beginning. Sherlock’s mind was completely alien to him: he looked across the table and saw someone he couldn’t understand in the slightest. The soft light illuminated the ghostly shade of Sherlock’s irises, and John realized in a rush that he desperately wanted to understand.

John cleared his throat. “Promise me you won’t tell her that. Not everyone thinks like you.”

“And thank goodness for that,” Sherlock drawled. “I see you’ve finished tea, let’s be off.”

John once again found himself chasing after the tail of Sherlock’s coat as he rushed out the door.

 

* * *

 

Crowded into a small flat in Camden, John watched Lucy Holt, so nearly Lucy West, wipe the tears away from her eyes.

“Sorry about the-” she gestured at her bloated face. “Started on Friday night, hasn’t stopped since. I’ve barely slept.” She muffled a sob into a tissue taken from a collection of boxes nearby. “I was so relieved when he called,” she said, nodding at Sherlock. “I’ve had well-wishers from the family, but I was always afraid Westie didn’t really know people at work.” She gave Sherlock a watery smile. “I’m glad he had a friend there.”

Not chancing a look at Sherlock’s face (John could imagine the eye-rolling occurring at that moment), John reached out and took Lucy’s hand between his own. She started, but didn’t flinch away. “I didn’t know him long, but he seemed like a great man.”

Lucy hand tightened in John’s grip. “He was the best man I knew. So talented, and kind… He was so excited when he got into the orchestra.” She dabbed at her eyes. “It was always a bit out of my league. I can’t even read music.”

“He was always asking me how I was, complimenting me on my playing…” John heard Sherlock say with a sniffle.

John’s head snapped up in disbelief. Sure enough, Sherlock’s eyes were red and shining, and he accepted a tissue box from Lucy with a weak smile of camaraderie.

“That was Westie,” Lucy said wistfully, “always thinking of others.”

John saw the familiar coldness in Sherlock’s eyes when Lucy looked away to blow her nose. It was a trick. Of course it was a trick. John’s stomach fell.

The mourning facade came right back when Lucy returned her attention to the two of them. “I remember how upset he was about Lester,” Sherlock ventured, blowing his nose for good measure.

Lucy shuddered. “He was horrified! Lester was his idol, it was one of the main reasons he wanted to be in the LSO.”

“But then they became friends.” Despite the veneer of sympathy, John could hear the analytical edge to Sherlock’s voice.

“Oh, yes,” Lucy answered, twisting the tissue in her hand, “Lester was his mentor. His word was gospel to Westie.”

“That must have been… so hard for him,” Sherlock said shakily. John resisted shooting him a disgusted look.

“He’s been so on edge since Lester’s death. He cried and cried. They had talked right before Lester went onstage. Westie was glad he had an extra reed to give him, at the very least.”

“Wait, what?”

The change of John’s tone of voice got him a confused look from Lucy and a warning glance from Sherlock, who continued with the grief-stricken friend routine. “Without Andrew, Lester would’ve never been able to play his last solo.”

“Westie couldn’t even begin to think of who would try to sabotage a sweet old man.” Lucy sounded scandalized.

“Couldn’t he?” Sherlock’s voice had lost every ounce of sympathy, and he was sitting straight up. “Come along, John, I’ve just remembered we have another appointment.”

As Lucy spluttered in disbelief, Sherlock walked out the door without a glance behind him.

“I’m so… so sorry, grief makes him, er, do strange things. Rude things.” John tried to soothe the freshly-upset Lucy. “Um, I’d better go look after him. Thanks so much for talking with us, I’m very sorry.” With that weak finish, John gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder and stormed out the door.

“Ah, there you are, I was wondering what was taking so long.” Sherlock was wiping away the last of his fake tears. Catching the look on John’s face, he stopped. “What?”

“How could you?” John asked, deciding not to mince words.

Sherlock’s mouth tightened. “Not good?”

“That was…” heartless, John thought, “a bit not good. You just manipulated her. A girl who didn’t even get the chance to be a widow!”

“Lucky for that, imagine wasting all of that money on the wedding only for this to happen.”

John grit his teeth. He noticed that Sherlock said progressively ruder things as John got angrier and angrier. Sherlock’s words were tinged with insecurity, if, John corrected himself, insecurity was even a trait in his emotional repertoire.

“Fine. Say whatever you want. Just solve the bloody case so this can be over.” John let his meaning hang implicitly in the air.

Sherlock’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t know you found me so distasteful.” He hadn’t missed John’s meaning at all.

“I still don’t know what to find you, but you’re not exactly winning yourself points right now.”

“What would you have me do?”

John’s mind flashed to the dark stage, the mouth moving down his spine and stomach, the hands smoothing over his sides—

He swallowed hard. “Try for a little humanity.”

It was as though a brick wall sprang up between the two of them. Sherlock’s face became as smooth as marble, and he tilted his chin up as he looked down at John. “I’m going back to the morgue.”

“I’m not going there ag—”

“I don’t want you to come.”

John felt a sharp pain somewhere in his abdomen. “I see.”

“You might talk.”

Ignored the sensation similar to being kicked in the stomach, John straightened up in what he knew was a futile attempt to match Sherlock’s height. “Yeah, alright. You’re probably right.”

The “of course” was left unsaid as Sherlock looked down his nose at John defiantly.

John brushed nonexistent dust off his jacket. “See you in rehearsal.”

Sherlock said nothing, although something like disappointment flashed in his eyes.

John shook his head, turned on his heel, and walked as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

He didn’t look back.


	5. Con fuoco

John walked into the usual coffee spot on Monday morning, ignoring uneasy glances from his fellow musicians. First, his reputation from the LA Philharmonic solo fiasco, now the fact that many of them had seen him cradling a murdered man… John supposed he couldn’t fault his colleagues for their edginess.

He was relieved to see Mike and Molly waving from their table. Even if he couldn’t secure the love of an entire orchestra, at least he had two friends. He held up a finger to them and pointed at the queue: if he was going to need coffee on any morning, it would be this one.

He had spent all of of his post-Sherlock Sunday in a depressed haze lazing around the flat, playing low, melancholy notes on his clarinet while slumped on the couch. He had told himself over and over again that his moroseness wasn’t due to his falling out with Sherlock. Despite all of the “adventures” he had on Saturday, he had still watched a man die on Friday: he damn well deserved to be in a pit of depression. If he couldn’t keep images of Sherlock out of his head while he spiraled lower and lower on his instrument’s range, well… it just couldn’t be helped.

After a night of tossing and turning, he had dragged himself out of bed and to the coffee shop. He kept telling himself that his nervousness was solely based on the prospect of facing the orchestra members after Friday night’s occurrences. It definitely had nothing to do with anyone in particular.

John ordered with a strained smile, moving to the end of the counter to wait for his coffee. That’s when he saw them.

Huddled in the corner were Sherlock and Irene Adler, deep in conversation.

John tried to hide his shock; he saw that a few musicians near the corner were failing in the same endeavor, straining to look at the pair out of the corners of their eyes. Irene’s normal circle of admirers was absent. Sherlock was talking furtively, looking around every few seconds; Irene, however, seemed completely focused on Sherlock, eyes never leaving his face.

“John?”

He jumped and turned around. The barista set his cup on the counter with a friendly smile, and John grabbed it and fled to the safety of Mike and Molly.

“What—” he began.

“Isn’t it weird?” Molly said, ogling at Sherlock and Irene.

“Like seeing a polar bear on the conductor’s podium,” Mike said, obviously making an effort not to stare.

“Has he not done this before?” John asked.

“Well, he came in with you the other day, and half of the orchestra thought you were shagging,” Molly said, not taking her eyes off the conversation happening ten feet away.

John choked on his coffee.

“It’s alright, John, I think they’re a lot more concerned with this now,” Mike muttered absently. Irene was still looking at Sherlock with almost alarming focus.

“Why is it so weird?” John couldn’t keep the petulance out of the question, and he ended up whining rather than inquiring. “He’s just… having a chat.”

The sentence felt wrong in John’s mouth. Mike and Molly both looked up, incredulous.

“Sherlock and socializing…” Molly shook her head, unable to finish the sentence.

She had a point. John glanced over again: Sherlock looked incredibly out of his element, tall figure folded into a small chair. The nervous glances didn’t help: John hadn’t known Sherlock to get nervous about anything. His gestures were emphatic and violent, and the unmoving Adler didn’t make a move other than letting her mouth curve into a small smile.

She looked over at John and it turned into a full smirk. She wiggled her fingers at him, and Sherlock turned around in irritation to see the source of disruption. As soon as he caught John’s eyes, he spun around again, leaning even closer to Irene. He looked furious.

Well, that was a bit odd.

John looked down at his mug, turning it between his hands. Mike and Molly had moved on to conversation about the next concert, but John felt like there was a thick pane of glass separating him from them. “Don Juan… more horns… supplemented percussion…” It faded altogether to white noise. John squirmed in his chair. He was burning to look back at the curious couple in the corner, but he didn’t want to risk either of them seeing him again. He wasn’t going to stare like everyone else in the whole damn coffee shop. And he definitely wasn’t going to try to interpret Irene’s finger waggle.

Or Sherlock completely ignoring him. Under no circumstances would he let himself think about that.

“I’m going to head in early to warm up.”

His interruption of Mike and Molly’s discussion caused both of them to look at him in surprise; he wondered if they had forgotten he was there. “We can come with you, if you’d like,” Mike offered.

“No, take another half hour. I just want to look over the music, I don’t know if I’m familiar with it.”

“It’s R. Strauss,” Molly said slowly.

“Yeah.”

“I doubt you’d get into any orchestra if you weren’t familiar with Strauss,” Mike said with a chuckle.

“Well, I don’t exactly know the program, and Lestrade could have picked any weird overture or symphony or… tone poem…” John realized that Molly was looking at him with undisguised concern. His voice had risen to a level above the buzz of the café, and people nearby were shooting him surreptitious looks.

“Great,” John mumbled.

“Is everything ok?” Mike asked. “Maybe you should take some time off—”

“I’ve only just started!” John snapped with much more force than necessary. Molly flinched. “I… Just because something bad happens doesn’t mean I get to neglect my career. I’m not doing that again.”

His friends were silent. He looked over to see Irene staring at him once more. Her sharp gaze was remarkably similar to Sherlock’s.

John clenched his hand. “Now that I’ve made a complete idiot out of myself, I’m going to leave.”

Mike nodded. He clearly wanted the conversation to be over. “We’ll see you in a bit.”

Molly seemed less certain. “John, you should stay. Finish your coffee. You can talk to us about whatever—”

“See you in rehearsal,” John said conclusively, picking up his case.

A look of hurt flashed across Molly’s face. “Alright. If you’re sure.”

He nodded, and walked out the door with as much dignity as he could muster.

He contemplated his own stupidity all the way to the concert hall.

Making a small scene in a coffee shop wasn’t the most embarrassing thing he’d ever done, but combined with all of the other events of the past week, he wouldn’t be surprised if he was completely shunned by his co-workers. He could hear it now: “John Watson, the man who saw someone die and went insane.” He growled in frustration as he stomped his way along the pavement.

However, he hadn’t thought about Andrew once that morning. The incident had escaped his conscience humiliatingly fast, leaving him with a hollow space in his chest where he knew guilt should be resting. Right next to the perpetual knot of panic. He was sure Mike and Molly thought that he was still upset about Friday night, but John had really been focusing on being snubbed by Sherlock. He tried to think of it in different terms, but he couldn’t. He felt like he was back in school, wondering what he had done wrong to make a friend ignore him or make a girl skip out on a date.

John groaned: he hadn’t even considered the other interpretation of his strop, the one that would undoubtedly prove to be the juiciest to his fellow orchestra members. “John Watson, Sherlock’s pathetic one-night stand… Oh, no.” He could see how it would seem that way: Sherlock showing up to coffee one morning with the newest member of the orchestra, the one who had the fewest preconceptions about his fellow players. They had probably pitied John, whispered about how he had slept with the loon.

And then Sherlock had shown up this morning with Irene, the most sought-after member of the orchestra with whom he already had a rumored involvement. People probably thought Irene was teasing John. For all he knew, she could have been teasing him. Maybe she didn’t know what had happened between them, either, and just assumed that John had unrequited feelings for Sherlock. Which John didn’t. He didn’t. He’d only known him for a week. He’d only…

His dream about the dark stage came rushing back to him, a soft lantern clicking on to reveal Sherlock’s hooded eyes, his hands, his mouth—

“Hell!” John’s yell echoed along the nearly empty street. An old woman walking on the side opposite him jumped in surprise. “Sorry,” he said hastily. She shot him a dirty look and continued on her way. John shook his head, hurrying towards the hall. He would just ignore it. After all, it wasn’t uncommon for people to confuse musical admiration with something completely different. John would get used to Sherlock being in the principal seat rather than the soloist’s spotlight, and things would return to normal.

 

* * *

 

Rehearsal did very little to return John to normalcy.

Henry, so sociable the week before, had been very reserved, barely mumbling a greeting to John before joining him in warm-ups. John couldn’t blame him; Henry had been closer to Andrew due to their seating proximity, and the empty chair at the end of the row throughout practice was a chilly reminder of the recent violence.

The atmosphere surrounding the entire ensemble was subdued. Having a natural death (or one that appeared natural, John mentally corrected) was one thing, but knowing that one of their own had been slaughtered was enough to dampen any good mood.

Lestrade was especially grim when he took the podium and addressed the orchestra. “As you know, we’ve lost a musician. Some of you have demanded that we cancel the next concert.” Sally and several others nodded. “I’ve decided not to, because it’s not what Andrew would’ve wanted. He told me in his interview that this orchestra was his dream all through childhood, and I don’t think he’d want us to stop on his account.”

Lestrade grew more gruff as he continued, “We’re going to keep doing what we usually do. We’re going to make beautiful music. And we’re going to dedicate it to Andrew.” He took up his baton and stared down at his hands, silent for several long seconds. Finally, he looked back up with a composed expression. “If any of you—” he pointed his baton in emphasis “—know anything about any of this, you need to come forward immediately.” He gave a sharp nod. “We’ll start with the Strauss.”

An hour later, half-deaf from the six horns playing at full blast behind him, John headed backstage for water and the toilet. He wasn’t expecting a pale hand to shoot out from a dark nook and seize his arm. He shouted in alarm as he was pulled into a narrow side-hallway before recognizing the hissed “Shut up.”

“Sherlock?”

“Why don’t you talk a bit louder, that’s a real guarantee for getting yourself murdered.”

John squinted, hardly able to see the other man in the darkness. “I thought we agreed that you’re the one who’s in danger of being offed.”

“And both of the people who’ve actually died have been in your section, so statistically…” Sherlock’s words were curbed by his refusal to raise his voice above a furious whisper.

John found himself matching the tone as he asked “Why have you dragged me into a storage hallway?”

“We need to talk.”

“We have nothing to talk about.”

Even in the dark, John could feel Sherlock giving him his best derisive look. “You’re joking.”

“I don’t see why you’d think that.” John let the anger he felt creep into his voice. Sherlock had been horrible the day before, and John wasn’t about to forgive him that quickly.

“Do you really not remember what Holt told us?”

“Lucy? Andrew was a great bloke, loved the orchestra… general stuff.” John struggled to recall exact words. His falling-out with Sherlock had cast a dark shadow on any information they had gleaned that day.

“Think. One thing that really stood out.”

John strained. He remembered exclaiming, and Sherlock looking at him in warning. But what… “Jesus. I’m an idiot.”

Sherlock nodded in concession. John’s hands curled into fists.

“She said that Andrew gave the extra reed to Lester,” John said, recalling the testy conversation. “It had to have been the one laced with the poison.”

“Knew you’d come around to it eventually.”

“But then why’d you go back to the morgue?”

“What do they keep in the morgue other than corpses?”

John looked at Sherlock in confusion.

Sherlock looked up as though searching for patience. “When someone’s declared dead at the scene and taken to the morgue straightaway, what do they arrive in?”

An ambulance? John was confused. Had Sherlock wanted to look at the vehicle or the body bag, or — it suddenly clicked. “His clothes. The tuxedo.”

“Very good. Took an entire minute longer than it should have, but still.”

“Did you look in his pockets?”

“Yes, no other reeds but there was a fair amount of particulate. I performed the same test and once again got a positive result.”

John felt a chill run down his spine. “Andrew murdered Lester. Why?”

Sherlock considered. “He wasn't smart enough to come up with such a complicated plan, let alone synthesize pure strychnine.”

“So he didn’t murder Lester.”

“Of course not. You heard Lucy, West practically worshiped him. Even if he did want to eliminate competition, Lester wouldn’t be the right choice: the gap between their skills was too great. If the principal spot had gone to anyone already in the orchestra, it would have gone to Henry Knight.”

John let his head fall against the wall. “But why would West lie to me about where Lester got the reed? If he didn’t know it was poisoned, he had no reason to lie.”

“I’m guessing he was being threatened.”

“ ‘He’s been so on edge since Lester’s death’…” John repeated Lucy’s words from the previous day. “If he was being threatened, then—” John looked up at Sherlock.

“He knew the identity of Murphy’s killer,” Sherlock finished for him.

John let out a sharp exhale. West wouldn’t have taken any reed offered to him because he knew what it had meant for Lester. He saw the broken reeds as an omen… “So he wasn’t superstitious... But he couldn’t exactly tell me that he was being targeted by Murphy’s killer.”

“He was going to tell eventually. The killer knew it, so he silenced West before he had the chance to blab.”

John remembered Andrew’s sudden terror at John ordering him not to take a reed from anyone else. “He must have been scared out of his wits.” There was still something missing. “Why would the killer target you, then?”

Sherlock gestured at the tiny hallway. “There’s a reason I wanted you to talk quietly. We had just found out about the strychnine the night before someone tried to kill me.”

John felt his brain whirring. “They’re watching us.”

Sherlock nodded grimly. “They’ve been watching us since you arrived.”

John’s panic knot kicked around in his ribcage. “What do I have to do with it? They tried to kill you.”

“Yes, because I’ve gotten involved and, no offense—” John prepared for horrible offense “—but I’m the only one who might be able to figure it out. But this person killed Lester to eliminate competition, and you swept in before they could replace him.”

John's heart beat in his throat. “Now that they’ve gotten rid of West, I’m next.”

Sherlock said nothing, which was as good as a confirmation.

They stood in the dark hallway, John’s increasingly-panicked breathing growing louder in the small space.

Suddenly, an oboe pierced the silence.

“They’re starting without us,” Sherlock observed.

“Be there in a minute,” John wheezed.

“John,” Sherlock put his hand on his shoulder. “Relax.”

“I am,” John choked out, “Really, I’ll be… ok.”

His sentence was contradicted by his legs giving out. Sherlock managed to catch him around his middle before he hit the ground.

Music drifted to them from the stage, and John chuckled weakly. “I’m glad everyone’s playing without us.”

“Why?”

“Me, swooning like a damsel and you scooping me up by the waist. People would talk.”

“People do little else,” Sherlock said with a small smile. He removed his arm, hand lingering for a moment by John's side. “Should I tell Lestrade…”

“No,” John said unsteadily, “No, I’m going back on. I’ll be alright.”

Sherlock looked doubtful. “You nearly just fainted.”

“Okay, rub it in some more, please.” John found that the irritation was, strangely enough, calming him down. “Really, I’m fine. I shouldn’t miss the first run-through of the piece.”

“If you’re certain.”

They walked back to the stage door, and Sherlock held it open for John. John hesitated, and Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Could you just go on? I’ll be onstage in just a minute."

“You said you were fine to play just a minute ago, surely you haven’t changed your mind already.”

“No, it’s just… you and me, coming in late… at the same time?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “You care what they think about you.”

“I care what they think about you and me,” John blurted out. He had to resist clapping his hand over his mouth. Stupid.

Sherlock looked confused, and John waited for the question. He would have to explain that people thought they were secretly shagging, that they thought John was jealous. He would have to outline all of the reasons it wasn’t true. He waited for Sherlock's mouth to open, dreading it.

Instead, Sherlock just nodded and walked through the door, letting it close behind him.

 

* * *

 

John listened to the exhausted horns warm down behind the woodwind section. He had dated a horn player for a few months who had expounded on the fatigue caused by Strauss and Mahler. She had also shown off the strength of her face muscles on several notable occasions; John thought about them fondly sometimes. The memories weren’t giving him much solace today, though. He looked at every face on the stage, wondering if one of them had been watching him and Sherlock. He wondered if someone in the room had been the one to drag the knife across West’s neck.

He was unsurprised to see Sherlock waiting for him at the stage door again. “I’m taking you home.”

John felt his face turn what was probably a delicate shade of purple. “Um, what?”

“I can’t let you go alone, you’d make an even easier target.”

John sagged. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed that Sherlock hadn’t meant what John thought he meant, or irritated that he had even thought it in the first place. Him being John, his annoyance came out one way or another. “I don’t need a chaperone. I’m a grown man.”

“So was Andrew.”

John grew more peeved. “I think I’d notice if I had some nutter following me around.” Too late, he thought while staring Sherlock down, and a laugh threatened to bubble out of his mouth.

“Andrew knew what the killer looked like, and even he was caught by surprise. Do you really think you’d stand a better chance?”

“I went to military school. I almost went into the army”

“But then you quit so you could go play the clarinet,” Sherlock pointed out wryly.

“HEY.” John stabbed a finger at Sherlock’s thin chest. “There is nothing emasculating about playing the clarinet.”

“That’s not what I was suggesting, but interesting reaction.”

John sighed. He could practically see Sherlock filing that into his mind for later reference. “You’re as bad as a shrink.”

“God, no. I’d say I’m worse.”

Don’t smile, John told himself. Don’t you dare—

Damn. He felt his mouth turn up of its own accord.

Sherlock’s returned grin indicated that he knew he’d won.

“We’re taking the tube.”

Sherlock’s smile disappeared. “Out of the question.”

“And why’s that?”

“Much more exposed.”

“I don’t think a taxi’s going to be much safer.”

Sherlock gave him a skeptical look.

“All I’m saying is that the killer could be the cabbie,” John said, raising his hands in defense.

Sherlock got a faraway look in his eyes: John knew by then that it indicated deep thought. “I suppose it would also be easy for the killer to ram another car into ours as well. The tube does have more witnesses,” he admitted.

John was about as chuffed as he’d ever been. He’d just made Sherlock do things completely his way for the first time since knowing him. He desperately hoped it wouldn’t be the last. “Well then, off we go.”

Sherlock on the tube was one of the funniest things John had seen in a long time: squeezed at one end by the crowdedness of the carriage, Sherlock needed to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling where it curved low. John was used to the odd smells and the seemingly-perpetual crying from babies, but Sherlock, in his immaculate suit and long coat, looked like a large vampire bat in a dog kennel. John, holding on to one of the poles in the carriage and shifting his weight expertly to avoid stumbling on stops, pointedly avoided the glares Sherlock kept shooting him over the head of a curly-haired woman. When they got off at John’s stop, Sherlock walked right up to the stoop and insisted that he come by in a cab the next morning for rehearsal. John allowed it, figuring that they could always take the tube back again. If Sherlock kept paying, maybe there wasn’t such a problem with constant taxis.

He settled in early that night, looking forward to a night of calm sleep: his Sunday argument with Sherlock the day before seemed to have been forgotten.

He dreamed of a faceless killer pushing Sherlock into the path of an incoming train.

His eyes snapped open and he fumbled for his phone with shaking hands. The glowing clock flashed in front of his eyes, momentarily blinding him: 4 AM.

He fell back onto his pillow with a sigh, wide awake and disconcerted. He’d exchanged one set of nightmares for another.  

 

* * *

 

 John felt uncomfortably alert when Sherlock picked him up the next morning. The dream had set him on edge: he kept peering around corners, afraid someone was lying in wait and ready to pounce as soon as he looked away.

Sherlock, of course, picked up on it right away. “What’s happened to you?”

“Didn’t sleep well.”

Sherlock appraised John. “More nightmares.”

John held up a finger. “I don’t even want to know how you know that.”

Sherlock shrugged and ushered John into the cab.

As they got closer to the center of the city, John decided to voice his concerns. “You’re being pretty lax about your own security, considering you’re the one they’ve already tried to kill.” He had aimed for teasing, but it had come out worried and insistent. John nearly groaned.

Sherlock didn’t break his gaze out the window. “I’ve told you before, I observe what’s important. They would find it very hard to sneak up on me or trick me.”

“What if they decide to use something more traditional, like… a sniper?”

“I’m hoping they won’t stoop to such a pedestrian move,” Sherlock said with distaste.

“Ah, yes, boring murder. So much less effective. You’ll still end up dead.” John wasn’t usually this sarcastic; he supposed being around Sherlock so much had caused some latent brazenness to emerge.

Sherlock eyed him with annoyance. “This killer doesn’t do boring. We should be thankful for that.”

“Why?”

“No murder is more difficult to solve than one that is completely commonplace. If the killer has a flair for drama, they’re much more likely to slip up at some point.”

“So, we just have to manage to stay alive until then.”

“Exactly.”

“Lovely,” John grumbled. On top of the stress of proving himself as a capable musician and abolishing any preconceptions his colleagues had for him (which he desperately wanted to do), he now had to worry about being killed.

They pulled up in front of the coffee shop. “You should run along to Mike,” Sherlock said dismissively once they were inside.

“And what will you do?”

“I have an appointment.”

John followed Sherlock’s gaze to Irene Adler, who eyed both of them expectantly. A surge of irrational anger swept through John. “Fine. Good.” His voice was strained; Sherlock had already started to walk away.

The newest bit of gossip, John thought. Sherlock Holmes arrives with pet John Watson only to once again abandon him for the glamorous Irene Adler. He shook his head: if anyone wanted to see him like that, fine. He was going to get a drink and sit down to have a pleasant conversation with Mike and Molly.

All Mike and Molly wanted to talk about was Sherlock.

“What in the world is going on between you two?” Mike blurted as soon as John sat down.

“Really?” John asked incredulously, looking at Molly for support. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

“We’re just curious, John,” Molly said.

John was resigned. If he couldn’t even get Molly to be on his side, there was probably no hope of skipping over the subject altogether. “What do you mean, ‘what’s going on’?”

“You two have been hanging around each other a lot.”

“We’re friends.”

Mike and Molly looked surprised to hear him say this, and even John hadn’t realized it was true until it came out of his mouth.

“Sherlock doesn’t have friends,” Molly argued.

“Everyone has friends.” John wanted to put an end to this conversation.

“Kind of an odd pair of friends, for him to scarper off to Irene right when you walk in together,” Mike said.

“He has to talk to her, it’s not really my concern.”

“It sure looks like your concern.”

John gritted his teeth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you look like someone’s put salt in your coffee, for one thing,” Mike pointed out.

“I didn’t sleep well,” John grumbled.

Molly shook her head.

“And what’s with you always skulking around in corners? Coming into rehearsal late at the same time as Sherlock?”

“You caught that?” John asked, surprised. He then reddened, realizing he had backed into a trap. “Er…”

“So you were with Sherlock before rehearsal.” Mike’s eyes grew critical behind his glasses. “John… are you and him…?”

“For God’s sake, I’m not shagging him!”

John had a horrible habit of not realizing how loud he was talking until everyone around him grew silent. There was some snickering coming from the direction of the table with Sally, Henry, and Anderson, and John resisted giving them the dirtiest look in his repertoire.

Molly was obviously trying to hold in a giggle. Mike looked satisfied. “Well, at least now you’ve announced it to the whole orchestra.”

“Shut up,” John mumbled, hiding his face behind his mug. His eyes strayed to Irene and Sherlock, and he was relieved to see that they hadn’t noticed his tantrum. His second outburst in a row at this bloody coffee shop. Jesus. Their heads were inclined towards each other, and they were so deep in conversation that the tables around them had lost interest.

Was John really relieved? That churning in his stomach didn’t exactly feel like relief.

 

* * *

 

 After rehearsal, John convinced Sherlock to take the tube again. Miraculously.

He complained the entire walk to the station, of course. John decided to try to change the subject. “So… Irene.”

Sherlock looked confused at the non sequitur. “What about her?”

“What was your ‘appointment’ with her for?”

It might have been John’s imagination, but he saw Sherlock start to walk a little faster. “Discussing musical strategy.”

“What sort of musical strategy?”

“I don’t see how it concerns you, seeing as you’re not a string player,” Sherlock snapped.

“I’m still in the orchestra, aren’t I?”

Sherlock frowned and didn’t answer.

John didn’t want to read too much into it. After all, Sherlock had explicitly told him that girlfriends were “not his area.” If he really was married to the music, it would make sense for him to collaborate with other musicians, especially those who played parts similar to his. However, the idea of Sherlock collaborating with anyone was incongruous with all of John’s other impressions of the man. Maybe Sherlock hadn’t wanted to explain whatever was going on with Irene when he and John were talking on the stage on Saturday. John may have blabbered on about his life, not to mention Mary, but maybe Sherlock wasn’t the type to talk about relationships.

As Sherlock descended the stairs in front of him, his coat billowing out behind him, John thought about how he didn’t seem like the type to have relationships at all.

Sherlock looked just as cross as he had the day before as they traversed the ticket hall. “I hate public transportation. Too many stimuli, too many stupid people.”

“Then why do you have an Oyster Card?” John asked as they tapped through the gates.

“Better to be prepared than to have to deal with some irritating ticket machine while I’m in a hurry.”

John could see the logic in that.

They reached the platform, and Sherlock toed the yellow line marking the edge of the safe standing zone.

“Could you just—” John grabbed Sherlock’s forearm and tugged him a little. “Don’t stand so close to the edge.”

“I’m not going to fall.”

“I’m more worried about you getting pushed, to be honest.”

Sherlock looked around. They were alone on the platform, a total rarity in Central London. “How in the world did you get that idea? Unless you plan on pushing me yourself.”

I’ve considered it, John thought. “No reason, just… you said to be on the lookout. For danger.”

Sherlock stared at him, and he had the uncomfortable sensation that Sherlock was reading his nightmare from the previous night as easily as a piece of sheet music. “I did.”

The train approached, but Sherlock didn’t break his gaze. His hair ruffled in the rush of incoming air, and John decided to look at it rather than Sherlock’s eyes. It didn’t turn out to be a good idea. How did he get it to curl so perfectly? How much product did he use? How would it feel to have his fingers knotted in it, pulling on it—

John gulped. Sherlock’s eyes narrowed.

The train in front of them stopped, and John rushed on before Sherlock could ask any questions. They sat in silence for the six stops it took to reach John’s flat. John spent the time wondering when he had become such a coward. He should just ask Sherlock frankly about Irene, if he wanted to know so badly. Of course, that would involve addressing his own conflicted feelings towards Sherlock at the moment and that was…

Nope, John thought. No conflicted feelings there. He just wouldn’t think about it. It would just go away, like an itch. Or like the difficult sections of music he occasionally ignored until he was forced to learn them in one day or risk crashing and burning at the concert.

Things were going to be fine.

John arrived home after a curt goodbye from Sherlock, concluded with another reminder to watch out for the cab the next morning. His annoyance with Sherlock’s insistence to take cabs had turned into resignation.

He busied himself around the flat, washing the dishes that had piled up in the sink over the course of the last few days. He read the latest thriller he had picked up, feeling drowsy even though it was barely dark out. At 9, he gave up on his book and slunk off to brush his teeth and fall into bed.

He dreamed that he was on the stage again, except this time he was certain that he was alone. No finger touched his neck, and he felt markedly uneasy. It looked as though someone had set up a fog machine at the back of the stage: the fog was pungent, and his eyes watered as he tried to get a better read on his surroundings. He would have a talk with Lestrade about telling the Barbican not to let theater techs set up fog machines onstage. He really shouldn’t even need to have that conversation at all, to be honest.

A deep, dark laugh sounded to his right. John felt every hair on his body stand straight up. “Who’s there?” he choked out. The fog was irritating his throat, and the moisture in his eyes made the gray scene in front of him blur into a writhing, miasmic mess.

“It’s your turn, John.”

“Sh-sherlock?” John coughed. The fog was unbearable. This wasn’t normal special-effects fog, this was closer to something real, like smoke.

Smoke.

John wrenched awake with a hacking cough. The air around him was thick with billowing smoke, and he realized that his dream had been his body trying to warn him. His flat was on fire.

He rolled out of bed, trying to remember the fire safety rules that had been repeated to him all his life. His brain felt fuzzy, and a far-off thought told him that he had probably inhaled a good amount of the fumes already. Get to the floor, he recalled. Fresh air.

He grabbed the glass of water he kept by his bedside before he fell flat to his stomach. His head swam. He reached behind him and pulled off one of his socks, soaking it with the water and shoving it in front of his nose and mouth. It wasn’t pleasant, but he instantly found breathing easier.

He crawled forward, remembering another rule: don’t try to take anything with you. Get out. He saw his clarinet case by the door; had he left it there before he went to sleep? It didn’t matter now; he was going to break at least one of the rules by shoving the case into the crook of his arm. It made crawling a good deal more awkward, but John would manage if it meant saving his instrument. Assuming he could even save himself.

He put his hand up to the closed door: it felt warm, but not hot to the touch. Safe to open. The metal doorknob was a little more of a problem, and he winced as he turned it. A burn on his hand wasn’t going to do him any favors in rehearsal.

“Why don’t you focus on getting out alive? Surely your musical neuroticism can wait.”

John groaned behind the sock. The voice inside his head now belonged to Sherlock. Either he was going crazy or the smoke inhalation was getting to him and he was going to die. Possibly both.

“Keep moving.”

John had to admit that it was effective. He pushed the door open and continued on his belly: on his right, the room that had once been his kitchen was a wall of flame. John had to crawl as far to the left as possible to avoid getting scorched. His clarinet case slammed into his armpit with every move, but he refused to leave it behind. He had used nearly all of his savings to buy the damn thing, and it had been a constant companion to him throughout all of the nonsense that had happened over the past—

“I think you can also skip the nostalgia, unless you’re aiming for the ‘life flashing before your eyes’ sensation. If so, carry on.”

“Such an… arse,” John coughed out, pressing the wet sock closer to his mouth. He was dizzier than he could ever remember being, the path in front of him blurring into a red-tinged nightmare. He slithered blindly until he felt exhausted. The heat was unbearable: when he stopped, it felt like he was kipping out next to the sun. He would just wait there a minute. Surely someone would come to get him.

“You’re right at the door, you idiot!” Sherlock’s voice snapped him out of his haze. He reached up and, sure enough, he felt another doorknob. He twisted it and pushed the door open: it felt like it was made of concrete rather than wood. He was suddenly very grateful that he didn’t live on the upper floor; he probably wouldn’t have had the energy to make it down a flight of stairs.

At the end of the hallway, the door leading outside was ajar. The smoke had cleared immensely, but he stayed on his belly until he was sure the air was clear.

“You can stand up now…” Sherlock said, voice fading.

John tried, but he found it a lot easier to stay on the ground. He rolled over the stoop and landed on his back on the pavement, gasping and coughing. White pinpricks of light erupted in his vision against the black sky. He had thought it was impossible to see any stars in central London.

He heard scuffling and became aware that several people were standing around him, most prominently an elderly woman with her hair up in curlers: his upstairs neighbor. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t get out! Damn fire brigade, taking their bloody time to get here.”

“Your name’s Doris,” John said dreamily.

“Oh dear,” Doris replied.

Sherlock could stuff everything he had said about caring more for John’s neighbors than John himself did: John was glad she had gotten out. He was so very, very glad…

He was vaguely aware of sirens, lights flashing in his peripheral vision. He was put off by a figure suddenly hovering above him. “ ‘Scuse me, the stars.”

The figure put a mask over his face, and John felt the first breath of pure oxygen like an injection of seven-percent cocaine solution.

“What a moronic comparison…” The voice in his head trailed off into the starry night.

 

* * *

 

“I’m fine,” John repeated for the tenth time.

Mike looked uncertain. “John, the doctor says you’re lucky your throat didn’t swell shut. God, you were almost intubated.”

“Yeah, thanks, I didn’t—” John let out a rasping cough. “—know that already.” Recovering from smoke inhalation wasn’t turning out to be a fun experience.

“You can’t expect to come into rehearsal today,” Mike said.

“But I—” another cough “—have to.”

The bags under Mike’s eyes were exaggerated by the fluorescent lights of the hospital room. “You can’t play.”

John felt the panic in his chest stick its fingers into his throat, which launched him into another coughing fit. “Dammit. I don’t want to get kicked out of another orchestra.”

“You haven’t been kicked out of anywhere, mate,” Mike reminded him gently. “Besides, Lestrade understands. Almost dying isn’t a suitable reason to sack someone.”

“Great, that makes me feel much better,” John said scratchily.

“How long did the doctor say it would take for your throat to heal?”

John shrugged. “He said the cough should be gone by tomorrow. He didn’t specify how long I’ll be talking like a frog.”

Mike quirked a smile. “See? If you can be back to rehearsal by tomorrow, you’ll be fine for Friday’s concert.”

John ran through the concert program mentally, checking to see if the pieces were easy enough to warrant him skipping an entire rehearsal. “You know, I think you’re right.”

Mike raised in his arms in a way that clearly said “of course I am.” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, I have to dash. You don’t mind? I could call Lestrade, he’d probably let me stay—”

“No, no, go on, I can take care of myself,” John assured him, raising his hand to shoo Mike away and almost ripping the IV out. He winced.

“Be careful now!” Mike reprimanded. “Maybe I should stay…”

“Honestly, I’m fine. Besides, I have my eye on one of the nurses.”

“Say no more. I’ll give you a call tonight to see how you’re coming along.”

“Fine, have a good rehearsal!” John waved him off.

As soon as Mike turned the corner, John slumped in his hospital bed. He had lied; he had neither of his eyes on any of the nurses. In all honesty, he just wanted to be left alone.

Mike meant well, as always, but he failed to grasp that John had just lost all of his worldly possessions in a fire, which admittedly hadn’t been much but he still felt entitled to some grieving time. The only items that were salvageable were his clarinet case, his wallet (which he, of course, keep in the front pocket of his case), and the pajamas he had been wearing when he made his narrow escape. The latter reeked of smoke, and he would probably have to chuck them as well.

Effectively, John was homeless and possessionless.

 

* * *

 

John should have been surprised when Sherlock strode in a half hour before rehearsal was scheduled to end, but he couldn’t summon the energy. Instead, he nodded in greeting as he took the last bite of his lunch. “Alright?” he grated out after swallowing.

Sherlock looked on-edge, hair in disarray. “Describe it.”

John knew what Sherlock wanted to hear, but he didn’t want to talk about it just yet. He looked doubtfully at the remnants of his custard. “Chocolate is my favorite, but it was a little grainy. I’m a bit disappointed—”

Sherlock sighed in exasperation, plopping down into the chair by John’s bed without any of his usual grace. “I’m not going to insult your intelligence by imagining that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

John pursed his lips, looking down at his hands where they lay folded in his lap. Anything to stare at other than the apex of Sherlock’s thighs, the violinist’s legs spread carelessly not three feet from John. “Have you considered that maybe I don’t want to talk about it? And how’d you find out so fast?”

“The news has spread quite quickly.”

“Like wildfire.” John gave a humorless laugh. “Fine, then. What about it?”

“Could you identify traces of any accelerants? Anything unusual about the source of the fire?”

“Um…” John wasn’t sure what he was supposed to look for, and his brain hadn’t been firing at full capacity while he was trying to escape. “The fire looked like it started in the kitchen—”

“Did you hear any of your fire alarms go off?”

John was taken aback; he hadn’t even thought about the fire detectors installed in his bedroom and living room. “Er…”

“Well?”

“Would you give me a second? It’s a bit hard to remember.” Smoke, burning, Sherlock’s voice — he would just leave that part out — but had he heard the alarm? “I… I don’t think I heard it.”

Sherlock’s face darkened. “I don’t think this was an accident.”

John didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Or I forgot to replace the batteries on the detectors.”

“Local code requires that the landlord put in new batteries before letting a flat to a new tenant. Batteries run out in a week? I don’t think so. Even then, a fire detector with a low battery is hard to ignore. You’d have noticed.”

Sherlock was making sense and John’s stomach was sinking. “There’s no way to prove it, though. Everything near the ignition point was burned to a crisp.”

Sherlock looked pensive, steepling his fingers under his chin and examining the room for the first time since he came in. John didn’t think he’d find much to look at; the hospital room had was as beige as possible, with the underwhelming exception of a bland watercolor on one wall. “Don’t know how I got my own room,” John said, not expecting Sherlock to answer. “I probably still smell like smoke. Didn’t want the other patients breathing it in.”

“Mycroft,” Sherlock murmured, eyes still flitting around the room.

“Mycroft, what—” Realization hit John. “You’re kidding. You got Mycroft to get me a private room? You didn’t think of, I don’t know, calling and asking first?”

Sherlock ignored him, gaze finally settling on the table to the right of John’s bed. “I see you managed to get your clarinet out.”

“Thankfully. It was on my way out the door, so to speak.” John remembered something hazy from the night before. “Sherlock… Last night, my case wasn’t where I usually put it.”

Sherlock’s eyes flashed. “What?”

“I almost always keep it by the front door, but last night it was in my bedroom. I thought I had just left it somewhere different for once, but…”

“You’re a man of habit,” Sherlock said, finishing John’s thought. “Always have been.”

John nodded. It wasn’t exactly his most exciting characteristic, but it was just one of the many things that he couldn’t keep secret from Sherlock. “What do you reckon?”

“I reckon,” Sherlock jumped out of his chair suddenly, “that we should open the case.”

John couldn’t get up without disturbing the small amount of machinery hooked up to him. Sherlock strode towards the case, and John struggled to get his attention. “Don’t you dare touch my clarinet,” John warned. He had been criticized by friends for being too protective of his instrument for years, and it seemed, as Sherlock had just deduced, that old habits died hard.

“It’s not the instrument itself I’m concerned with,” Sherlock explained as he touched the black leather, carefully turning the case on its side.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Not exactly.” Sherlock flipped the clasps keeping the case shut. “I assume you keep your reeds in here as well.”

“Yeah, obviously—” John froze. “Wait. You don’t think that…”

“Oh, but I do think,” Sherlock announced grimly, holding up the first reed he had picked out of the case and holding it up to John.

A large crack bisected the middle of the thin strip of wood.

Dread flooded John. “No. Check the others.”

One after the other, Sherlock held up John’s reeds to him. All of them were mangled, unplayable.

John felt the hospital lunch threaten to come right back up his esophagus. “Christ.” It made sense, now that he really thought about it. Sherlock had warned him that someone would try to kill them, and fire seemed like a good way to do it. John had convinced himself that it was a fire caused by his own human error, and that had made him feel better than thinking the killer was well and truly after him. Still, something didn’t add up. “Why did they move my case?”

“They most likely wanted to scare you. I’m sure they know that we know what the broken reeds mean.”

John sighed. “I still don’t understand. I was so close to not making it out of there… If I had woken up a minute later, I probably wouldn’t be here. Then all of that reed-breaking would have been for nothing. Why would they disable the fire alarms if they just wanted to scare me?”

Sherlock looked from the broken reeds to John, face guarded. “If you could look at one thing before you died, what would it be? If you could touch one thing?”

John’s eyes lingered over Sherlock’s face, the dramatic curve of his upper lip. “My clarinet,” he answered, a few seconds too late.

“So…”

John could picture it. If he had woken up later, he would have put his hand up to the door and realized that it was too hot, that the fire would consume him immediately if he tried to exit that way. The window in his room didn’t open wide enough to crawl through. He would have decided to wait for emergency personnel, hoping they would make it on time. He would have spotted his clarinet case through the smoke and decided to open it, just in case it was the last time.

Upon opening it, he would have seen the reeds. The fear would have joined the smoke, choking him until he died with the last thought in his head being one of horror: the killer had reached him. Sherlock would be next.

“Are you going to be alright?” Sherlock asked tentatively.

John realized he had been staring into space, envisioning this morbid scene for what must have been five minutes. He allowed himself to slump back against his pillow. “Probably not.”

Sherlock said nothing.

John suddenly felt angry. “I don’t know how you expect me to be alright. Someone is trying to kill me, my house burned down, and all of my sheet music is ash.”

John heard a sound he couldn’t have ever imagined. He looked up at Sherlock in shock. “Did you just… snort at me?”

Sherlock’s face was pink, and he was obviously trying to hold in laughter. “Sorry, sorry, only it’s — only you would be more concerned about your sheet music collection than the fact that a mad killer is after you!” Sherlock couldn’t hold it in any longer, and he nearly spit out his first peal of laughter, curling forward on his knees in front of John’s case.

John tried to appear disdainful. He opened his mouth to scold Sherlock, and instead ended up joining in. The laughter didn’t do anything to help his throat, and it was more of a wheeze compared to the deep, rich laughs coming from Sherlock.

John knew he should be appalled. They were in a hospital room discussing how someone was doing their very best to kill the both of them, and they were laughing to the point of tears. “This really—” he coughed loudly between laughs “—isn’t that funny. My throat needs to be better by tomorrow.”

Sherlock finally got his laughs to trail off, wiping his eyes. “Oh, dear…” He gave one last chuckle, that rare and genuine smile gracing his features. John forced himself to look away when all he wanted to do was drink in the sight: Sherlock was an entirely different person when he smiled like that.

Sherlock eventually composed himself, resuming his interrogation. “When will you be discharged?”

“The doctor said tonight, if my oxygen saturation stays high.”

“Good, you can come straight over.”

“Excuse me?” John was sure he had misheard.

Sherlock fixed John with the look of an adult explaining something simple to a child. “The extra room is all ready.”

John sat completely straight, looking at Sherlock with what he hoped was disbelief. “When did I agree to come stay with you?”

“You didn’t. Mike asked when he called me before rehearsal.”

That was it. John needed to have a serious talk with Mike. Why hadn’t he thought to mention the phone conversation when he’d visited John that morning? John pinched the bridge of his nose.

It was true, John hadn’t really thought about where he would stay. He had some vague idea of staying on someone’s couch  — Henry or Molly or even Mrs. Hudson — but it seemed far-fetched when he thought about it in concrete terms. Mike was out of the question, with his wife and three kids already taking up all of the space in their home. The only option he hadn’t considered was the option that was now staring him in the face: staying with Sherlock. “I don’t know…”

“For God’s sake.” Sherlock sounded exasperated. “You need somewhere to stay, I have an extra room. Facile, John.”

John was sorely tempted to ask Sherlock if he would do this for any member of the orchestra, if it was so “facile.” Instead, he considered other variables in the situation. “I need clothes for tomorrow.”

“Mike’s already given some to me.”

“Mike knows my size?”

“I know your size, I told Mike to buy you some because he insisted on doing something helpful.”

Sherlock Holmes knew his size. John’s ears felt warm. “That’s just disturbing, you know.”

“Don’t be such a girl.”

“And that’s sexist.”

Sherlock’s face grew serious. “If you really want to stay somewhere else, I’m sure we—” the annoyance in Sherlock’s eyes suggested Mycroft— “could set you up in a hotel. It could be near the music hall.”

John considered. The idea of living with someone else, even temporarily, was appealing. He enjoyed being alone, but he much preferred knowing that someone else lived in his house and would be around at some point. “So, you’re doing all of this just because I’m not boring?”

Sherlock blinked a few times, turning away before saying “Something like that.” His voice was all nonchalance.

John froze, trying to read the half of Sherlock’s face that was visible to him. What did that mean?

Sherlock turned back to John, his expression indifferent. “Additionally, with two of us on different sides of the flat we’ll be much more likely to protect against invasions from the killer. They might even be discouraged from attempting to murder you in your sleep again, if we’re lucky.”

Ah, yes. It was silly of John to expect anything else.


	6. Acciaccato

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need to apologize for the lateness of this update; real life (moving, school, wisdom teeth, etc.) has a funny habit of getting in the way. If you're still here, thank you!

“Is that a skull?”

John supposed he could’ve focused on any of the other strange minutiae in Sherlock’s living room first: there was a hunting knife pinning down a pile of correspondences not far from the object of interest on the mantel, and John thought he saw bullet holes in the wall, but he focused in on the skull immediately. He supposed it probably had something to do with his recent brush with death and the ever-present threat of the invisible killer.

Sherlock barely glanced at the mantel. “Ah, Billy.”

John’s mouth fell open. “You _named_ your skull?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Sherlock eyed him with genuine confusion.

John sighed. He was silly to expect anything less. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the two chairs by the fireplace. Even without Sherlock’s deduction skills, he could tell which one the violinist favored: the seat of the black leather chair was worn and slightly sunken, while the chair across looked practically unused. It was also quite ugly in a charming way, floral pattern clashing with the other décor.

Nearing the kitchen attached to the living room, John noticed two vials on the floor. He thought it didn’t bode well, and he was right: the kitchen itself was a mess of beakers and cylinders and flasks. John walked gingerly into the fray of glass, frowning. He turned to Sherlock, pointing to a kitchen chair and the complicated chemistry apparatus balanced on its seat. The liquid inside of the beaker was mud-colored and menacing. “What’s this, then?”

“Fractional distillation,” Sherlock answered.

John wondered what it was like for other flatmates moving in across the city who only had to ask how to work the dishwasher or which way to turn the shower handle. “Can I move it?”

“Why would you do that?”

“Um…” John inclined his head towards the chair. “I dunno, to sit?”

“Don’t touch it.”

“I’m going to need to sit at the table eventually.”

“Surely not right _now_?”

John raised his eyebrows in a way that he hoped conveyed to Sherlock exactly what he was thinking: it didn’t bloody well matter when he was going to sit down, he just wanted to know he had the option to do so without being impaled by Sherlock’s chemistry equipment.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, moving to the chair and picking up the machine. “Fine.”

John smiled. “Was that so hard? Now we just need to get the rest tidied up—”

Sherlock shot John a dangerous look. “Don’t touch my experiments.”

“Where do you keep your experiments?”

Sherlock gestured at the kitchen in general. “Pick a cabinet.” He carried his machine out of the room and John heard a door slam. It was reopened a second later. “Your room’s upstairs. I don’t think there’s anything in, so you might want to call for takeout.” The door closed again.

John hoped Sherlock was exaggerating, but as he explored the kitchen he found that his statement rang true. Every nook and cranny of the room was stuffed with a stand for sample tubes, a collection of petri dishes, or glassware covered with plastic wrap; some items emitted sinister smells. The last thing John checked was the fridge: he was starving and still exhausted from the events of the past day, but he was also dreading what he might find.

His dread was appropriate. He opened the fridge and closed it again immediately, trying not to gag. This, of course, irritated his smoke-raw throat and set off a fresh wave of coughs. It was a minute before he could comfortably shout “Sherlock!”

No answer.

“Why are there FOX HEADS in the fridge?”

John heard the door swing open again, and out strode Sherlock. “What? You haven’t touched them, have you?”

John froze. He was so used to seeing the violinist in dress shirts and trousers that he had started to assume that was all he owned. The idea of anyone sleeping in suits was ridiculous, but John was still surprised to see Sherlock wearing striped pyjama bottoms and a plain grey t-shirt. His dressing gown flew out behind him as he rushed into the room, pinning John with an accusing look. John supposed he still had to retain some of his drama. “I’m not too keen on touching moldy fox heads, thanks.”

Sherlock’s bottom lip jutted out. “I don’t know why you even looked, I told you there was nothing in.”

“I wouldn’t call that nothing.” John shuddered. “What do you _eat_?”

Sherlock shrugged. John remembered him saying that eating slowed him down, so he tried another tack. “How often do you eat?” he asked.

“Whenever I feel faint,” Sherlock replied sullenly, walking over to the sofa and letting himself flop down.

“Well, you’re going to eat tonight.”

Sherlock gave no answer, stretching on the sofa and then curling up in a manner reminiscent of a cat.

“I guess that means I’m getting dinner,” John sighed. “It’s not exactly fair, I’ve been in hospital all day.” John wasn’t one to whine, but Sherlock deserved at least a small guilt trip.

Even more silence from the sofa.

John realized when he was fighting a losing battle. “What are you in the mood for?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sherlock finally replied, voice muffled by a cushion.

“I think I’ll get Thai.”

A noncommittal grunt from Sherlock told him that it wasn’t a reprehensible choice.

 

* * *

 

An hour and a half later, John groaned from the amount of food in his stomach. “If I keep buying food for the two of us without you eating any, you’re going to have to roll me to rehearsal.”

The light in the living room was dim; Sherlock’s face was illuminated by the light of the television. “I doubt that would happen. You’d die of heart disease first.”

“You’re such an encouragement,” John deadpanned, but the infinitesimal way Sherlock’s mouth turned up indicated that it was in jest.

They were sitting together on the sofa, and John had to admit that Sherlock had eaten a fair amount of what he’d picked up. Still, it hadn’t been enough to stop John from feeling distinctly rounder.

He huffed a laugh through his nose. “I feel like that giant blueberry girl.”

Sherlock turned to him from his lounging position on the opposite side of the couch, nonplussed.

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?”

Sherlock gave him a blank look.

John sighed. “I guess you’re not that up on movies.”

Sherlock nodded in the direction of the television. “I hate this.”

“Then why do you have one in your living room?”

Sherlock raised a shoulder, chin tucked up against the arm of the sofa. “It seemed like a… thing that people do.”

“Hm.” John fit one more bite into his mouth before slouching. “Well, we ought to watch that movie. Before I leave, I mean.”

“Sounds frivolous.”

“It’s _fun_.”

“Is this fun?” Sherlock asked, voice thick with scorn and eyes on the television.

They were watching one of the property shows that were becoming more popular. John had spent a good deal of hours drooling over all of the beautiful houses he could never even dream of affording. “It’s a… thing people do.”

Sherlock pursed his lips in consideration. “It does cater to the basic human sensation of envy, I suppose.”

“Eh.” John couldn’t deny that.

Some small drama started on the program, and John’s eyes were glued. He chuckled, irritating his tickly throat: soon, the commentary of the show was interspersed with his small coughs. After several minutes, he turned to Sherlock, sure that he must have been thoroughly annoyed at that point.

Instead, Sherlock was asleep. His face was expressionless, head cradled in the nook between the arm and cushion of the sofa. His hands rested in front of his chest; his breathing was slow, air coming out of his nose in soft snuffs.

John felt paralyzed. He had never seen Sherlock look so neutral and untroubled; even when the violinist was happy or triumphant, there was an edge to it, usually as a result of making someone else look foolish. The look of peace he wore now gave the moment a feeling of fragility: John didn’t want to move or speak in case it accidentally woke him. He remembered Sherlock saying that he didn’t sleep very often, and John was anxious not to disturb him during one of those rare times.

He carefully reached for the remote, turning off the television and wincing at the electronic ping it emitted as the screen went black. Setting the remote down, he forced himself to move in slow motion, rising and gathering any leftovers before walking on tiptoe into the kitchen. He shoved the leftovers in the fridge on the shelf under the fox heads, trying not to look at the permanent macabre yowls on their faces. For the first time, he wondered where exactly Sherlock had gotten them from. He hoped he hadn’t gone off for a night of urban foxhunting; wasn’t there a law about that? There were laws about everything. John’s food-addled brain was starting to demand sleep.

On his way out, he paused in the doorway leading to the stairs. Sherlock still seemed fast asleep; he had turned onto his side and was facing the back of the sofa, face hidden from John. _Don’t be stupid_.

Ignoring his own advice, John rushed forward to grab the blanket from the unused armchair, draping it as gently as he could over Sherlock’s sleeping form. He was relieved that Sherlock didn’t stir; there was something about getting caught that made John nervous. After making sure the blanket covered as much of Sherlock as possible (his pale feet still protruded from the end), John took his leave. The stairs barely creaked, allowing him to move a little faster to his new bedroom.

There were no decorations in the room, but John supposed there wasn’t a need for them: Sherlock had said that no one used it. The bedspread, however, was a pleasant navy color and the sheets felt softer than any others John had slept in. Lying in bed, he began to regret testing the bed first rather than brushing his teeth: he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get up. The taste of stale Thai food on his tongue eventually forced his hand, and with a groan he set off to the bathroom.

Settling in for good a few minutes later, he double checked the alarm on his phone: smoke inhalation or not, he refused to be late to rehearsal tomorrow. His throat was feeling much better, meaning he really didn’t feel like he was going to cough unless he thought about it — he coughed loudly, chest aching from the repetitive motion. He’d just have to try not to think about it, then.

Elephants, he thought, it was like someone saying not to think about elephants, which meant that you’d be thinking about elephants for the rest of the day. What was that other idiom about elephants?

He thought of Sherlock peacefully asleep a floor below him. Ah, yes. The elephant in the room.

John groaned, rolling over onto his stomach, head turned to one side. He hadn’t thought through his confusing feelings for Sherlock before accepting his offer to live in 221b, but now that he was there he knew he’d have to face them soon. Living in the same space as someone made them particularly hard to avoid. If even fox heads couldn’t dispel the weird thrill that John got from looking at the lock of hair that curled at the nape of Sherlock’s neck, he wasn’t sure if anything could.

He inhaled deeply. Thankfully, the sheets smelled like clean laundry. No smell of moldy fox flesh or chemicals or dust or old books… Was that what Sherlock smelled like? John hadn’t been close to Sherlock for long enough to smell him He’d like to, though. Maybe his sheets smelling like Sherlock wouldn’t be so bad.

“Enough,” he huffed into his pillow. Thankfully, he was tired enough that every thought he tried to hold on to slid out of his mind’s grip. Soon, sleep consumed him.

 

* * *

 

John awoke the next morning to find Sherlock showered and dressed already, looking at slides under his microscope. John was thankful for that; he could avoid any awkward situations involving Sherlock emerging from the bathroom wearing only a towel around his waist. Or something ridiculous like that. God, what did he think his life was now, a bad erotic novel?

“Morning,” John croaked out, moving to the kettle. “I hope you don’t keep any experiments in here.”

Sherlock didn’t answer, eyes glued to whatever he was examining. John opened the kettle cautiously: the inside was spotless. “Thank God,” he breathed. While he had been out the night before, he had picked up some PG Tips from the Tesco near Sherlock’s flat. As the water boiled, John reflected that he should probably drink better tea.

“I should drink tea that isn’t complete rubbish,” John said, voicing his thoughts aloud.

“Man of habit,” Sherlock reminded him. John bristled, but Sherlock was already continuing “I see your voice has gotten worse.”

“Yeah.” It sounded like the rasp of a pack-a-day smoker, if he was being honest with himself. “But I think my cough is nearly gone.” He coughed. “As long as I don’t think about it.”

“Elephants, John,” Sherlock murmured.

“What?” John asked in shock, teabag poised over mug. Was Sherlock finally going to reveal that he was a mind reader? It would certainly explain a lot.

“Isn’t that an idiom, or something? Thinking about elephants?” Sherlock couldn’t see John’s nod, so he swatted away the conversation like he would a fly. “I’ll have tea.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” John grumbled. He grabbed another mug, checking to make sure there were no spiders, nematodes, or other creatures living in it. “I’m surprised you haven’t been poisoned in here yet, no wonder you never eat.”

John brought the mugs of tea to the table, a splash of milk in his and two spoons of sugar in Sherlock’s. Sherlock accepted his, finally looking away from his slides to take a sip. His face puckered. “You really do have dreadful taste in tea.”

“Good, then you can do the shopping,” John shot back, sitting down across from Sherlock. It was too early for to argue.

Sherlock went back to his slides, and as John made his way through his mug he began to feel presumptuous. He had been there for less than 24 hours, he didn’t know how long he’d be staying, and he was already relegating the shopping to Sherlock. And planning movie nights, he added on, remembering his blueberry joke the night before. He was being _domestic_ , and he wasn’t even paying rent.

“Uh… Sherlock?”

“Hm?”

“I was just joking. I can do the shopping, while I’m here, I mean.” John cleared his throat lamely.

“You make it sound like a matter of great consequence,” Sherlock noted, turning one of the knobs to focus the lens.

“Well, it’s just that I haven’t really said thank you yet, so—”

“Oh, please don’t,” Sherlock said, face twisting in displeasure over the microscope.

John was taken aback. “You don’t want me to thank you?”

“Of course not. There’s no reason for you to.”

“You’re letting me stay here for _free_ —”

“Hardly!” Sherlock had looked up from the slides, sharp eyes fixed on John. “While you’re here, you have to focus on the case. You don’t really have a choice.”

“What ‘case’ do we have to focus on?” John asked, confused. “The fire brigade thinks my house burned down because of faulty wiring. A pile of broken reeds won’t convince them otherwise.”

“Exactly! Don’t you see?” Sherlock was becoming agitated, one hand creeping up his neck to muss his hair. “The police refuse to accept even the most blatant evidence. If _we_ don’t investigate, the killer will run free.”

“The police know West was murdered.”

“Knowing it doesn’t mean they’ll be able to do anything. The police are hopeless!” Sherlock concluded in a sibilant hiss.

John saw that the conversation was going nowhere. He couldn’t see a way of avoiding the case without rejecting Sherlock’s hospitality. He was repelled by the murders but simultaneously embroiled: it had become personal when he had watched Andrew West die. As unappealing as hunting for a murderer should sound to him, John found himself nursing a desire for revenge. Bloodlust, even. It was so far from his usual character that he had to grapple to make sense of it, and when he couldn’t he accepted that he would eventually need to act on it. The anger and events of the past week muddled around in his brain, compounded by his new living arrangements: when he had moved to London for a new start, he didn’t think it would involve knives and fire and rooming with a detective-scientist-violinist.

Narrowing Sherlock down to those three words made John’s mind rebel: it felt sterile and impersonal. Maybe it was easier for him to think of Sherlock impersonally than to face the thought of rejection. If he addressed his burgeoning feelings for the brilliant man sitting across from him, that was what he would get. Sherlock had said himself that he was married to the music; he had practically warned John from the beginning. But still, here John was, having confusing dreams and sleep-blurred fantasies about the one person who had cautioned him to stay away.

It was ridiculous that a little more than a week ago John had been alone in Los Angeles. Everything had become so damn complicated in such a short amount of time.

He stared down at his lap, hands clenched, and took a deep breath before looking back at Sherlock. “Are you going to finish your tea?”

“No,” Sherlock snapped, ducking his head back to the microscope.

John poured the rest down the sink.

 

* * *

 

Later on the way to rehearsal, John shifted in the seat of the cab. He turned to Sherlock, only to be faced with the back of his head: his torso was twisted sideways to dedicate all of his attention outside. John was stung. The usual silence between him and Sherlock felt like a thick blanket today, and John found himself aching to throw it off.

“So, are you going to have another one of your _appointments_ with Irene today?

 _Shit_. So much for making things less awkward.

Sherlock said nothing, but gave a small humming noise of affirmation.

John felt an irrational surge of anger and didn’t try to quell it. “You don’t need to lie to me.”

He was satisfied when Sherlock turned around, and even more so when he saw a hint of alarm in his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sherlock asked sharply.

“You’re allowed to call them dates. I don’t know who you’re trying to kid, but—”

“I don’t _date_ ,” Sherlock interrupted, eyebrows drawing together.

“Whatever word you use, then. Do you expect me to believe that the two best musicians in the orchestra need to talk strategy?”

“Yes, actually.”

John gave a humorless laugh. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“I know,” Sherlock agreed, eyes unreadable. John shook his head, turning to look out the window as they drove down the Euston Road.

Nothing else was said for the rest of the journey.

They got out in front of the coffee shop, John muscling his way forward so he could pay the cabbie. He got out and started walking in the direction of the concert hall.

“Where are you going?” Sherlock’s voice sounded indignant behind him, and John felt a stab of vindication.

“The hall. Going to warm up,” John said over his shoulder, not stopping.

“Downbeat isn’t for an hour!”

“Yeah.”

“What about Mike and Molly?” Sherlock nearly shouted to make himself heard.

John was almost twenty feet away, and he still refused to turn around. He realized that some of his anger was irrational, but he couldn’t help it. Sherlock being secretive about Irene made him see red: John couldn’t hide anything private from Sherlock, yet Sherlock refused to give him even a hint of what he discussed with the principal cellist. John was already tired of feeling exposed without getting anything in return.

He wasn’t going to budge. “I’ll talk to Mike after rehearsal. Have a good chat with Irene.” He didn’t mind that his voice shook from anger; he could always blame it on the smoke inhalation. He walked away quickly, out of earshot of any reply Sherlock might have shouted in his direction.

 

* * *

 

 Despite the decent amount of sleep he’d had the night before, John felt exhausted as he entered the hall. It was early enough that the cleaning staff was still there, most of them giving him odd looks. Dave stood near the musician’s entrance and gave him a small wave, which John returned with a curt nod. After wending his way through backstage, he pushed open the stage door, half-wondering if the chairs would even be set up yet.

They were, thankfully, and the stage wasn’t unoccupied. Lestrade was at the podium, brows furrowed and eyes on his score as his hands moved purposefully through the air. Even conductors had to hone their skills, but John was impressed with Lestrade’s willingness to show up early to practice in the hall. He had worked with some conductors who were true primadonnas, keeping their techniques secret in an attempt to impress the orchestra during rehearsal. That was selfish of them, in John’s opinion: seeing how the conductor worked and witnessing their conducting thought processes helped the orchestra. Shrouding the conducting in mystery would only result in unfocused and uncertain music.

Lestrade probably knew this better than most conductors: he had never been a distinguished soloist, even during his time as principal trombonist in the LSO. From what John had read on the Internet and heard from Mike, Lestrade had worked his way up from within the ensemble, cooperating with his fellow musicians rather than striking out to make a name for himself. John wondered if Lestrade would have gotten a conducting position earlier if he had tried the latter strategy, but he doubted it: the appeal of Lestrade’s leadership was built on him not thinking like a soloist.

Long story short, John liked Lestrade. He seemed like the type of guy John would get a pint with.

Lestrade looked up at the sound of the door closing, hands halting. “John, good to see you back. How’s your throat feel?”

“Good,” John replied, proud to hear that his voice was only a little scratchy. “Ignore the voice.”

“You only missed parts of the Dvořák yesterday. There was some trouble in the percussion section, but nothing in particular you need to work on, I think. Let me double-check,” Lestrade mused, flipping through his score.

“I’ve played it before.”

Lestrade nodded. “Good. I thought so.”

John had played Dvořák’s eighth with the LA Phil, along with playing it during his time in music school. He was actually getting sick of it, but he wasn’t about to tell Lestrade that. “I’m a bit early, so I can look over it one last time.”

“Before you start, I need to introduce you to someone.”

John was confused. “Who?”

Lestrade motioned behind him, and John turned around to see someone sitting in the chair that was formerly Andrew West’s. John hadn’t noticed the man at first because he was so unassuming: small in stature and dressed plainly, he was blowing air silently through his clarinet while moving his fingers deliberately on the keys. He didn’t seem to be paying attention to either of them.

“Look,” Lestrade said, lowering his voice, “I know it’s a bit early to be replacing Andrew, but we really need a fourth clarinet for the Strauss. Jim’s great, he’s been our stand-by alternate for years. I’m thinking about offering him the spot permanently.”

“Why don’t you?” John asked.

“I want you to give him a listen first, during rehearsal. Don’t be too obvious about it.”

John was flattered. Lestrade was placing a lot of responsibility on his shoulders: it was essentially going to be up to him whether Jim was hired or not. It made John a little nervous, but he hid that behind a nod of understanding.

Lestrade led him over to Jim, who stopped practicing and stood up as they approached. “Jim, this is John Watson, our principal clarinetist.”

Jim smiled, revealing a set of small white teeth. “It’s wonderful to meet you,” he said, shaking John’s offered hand enthusiastically, “I was ecstatic when I found out I’d be working with you.”

The flattery thawed John a little, and he returned the smile. They exchanged some more pleasantries, and Lestrade, satisfied, returned to the front of the stage.

John and Jim sat down, and as John got out his clarinet the subject of West arose. “Awful,” Jim said, shaking his head, “I was in the audience that night, but I only heard about Andrew the next morning.”

“Did you know him well?” John asked around the reed in his mouth, twisting the mouthpiece onto the barrel.

“Not really,” Jim replied, eyes morose. “I wish I had. We went out for drinks after concerts once or twice, but always in a group.”

John aligned the reed on the mouthpiece and tightened the ligature. “How long have you been an alternate here?”

“Oh, god… three years now, I think? It must be.”

“You ever think about auditioning again for a permanent spot?”

“Once or twice,” Jim said, shrugging. “I’m already in a quintet and I give lessons, so I was never too keen. I suppose it’d be nice.”

John started to warm up, and Jim followed his suit. John listened carefully and found that Jim had a good tone, a little airy but clear. John found himself hoping that Jim did well during the rehearsal; he seemed like a nice guy, and it would be a relief to know that they had found a new clarinetist.

Fifteen minutes before the downbeat, musicians started to trickle onstage. The sound built up from the two clarinets to a cacophony of percussion, strings, and winds warming up. Although he tried not to notice, John saw Sherlock and Irene come onstage together in his peripheral vision. His eyes flicked up to see them close together, still in the middle of conversation. Resentment flooded John, and he had a strong impulse to bite down on his reed.

They separated and went to their seats. John’s eyes followed Sherlock as he sat down and appraised his bow. Without warning, the violinist’s eyes shot up to meet John’s with an accusatory glance. John looked away immediately, focusing on the symphony open on the stand in front of him. He wasn’t about to get caught in a silent argument with Sherlock and, regardless, his anger still demanded that Sherlock receive nothing but complete silence from him. John remembered that he was living with Sherlock, meaning that the silence couldn’t last long. His anger grew; surely Mike could let him stay over for a night. He could kip on the sofa.

Lestrade stepped onto the podium and cleared his throat. Although the gesture was inaudible to anyone except those closest to him, the entire orchestra stopped playing within seconds. Lestrade smiled. “Okay, today’s the run-through, so I won’t stop unless something completely catastrophic happens. Don’t make me stop,” he warned, brandishing his baton jokingly. He waited for the bubble of laughter to dissipate before raising his hands. All of the instruments went up to playing position, and with an inhale from Lestrade they began.

John claimed to be sick of Dvořák 8, but he couldn’t deny that it was beautiful. It was full of the little earworms that the composer was fond of using, melodies that John would probably find himself humming in the shower for days after the concert. No, he thought to himself, there would be no humming in the shower with Sherlock in earshot. He didn’t want to be subject to ridicule.

Did that mean John was still going to be at Sherlock’s long after the last concert on Sunday? What had happened to his resolve to ask Mike for a place to stay? Besides, there had to be an affordable flat being let somewhere within the first two zones of the city. If John spent his weekend searching for listings, he might even be able to move in the following week. The thought of having his own place and his autonomy back should have made him feel good, but instead he felt hollow. Another small, undecorated flat waited for him in one of the bleaker boroughs of London; the knowledge that he would have to go look for it soon was anything but exciting.

During his rests, as he counted the bars on autopilot, he found his eyes straying to stage left, away from Lestrade’s clear pattern to the first violins. It was easy to see Sherlock; he was tall compared to the woman sitting next to him, and the clarinets were elevated due to the risers set up for winds and percussion.

It appeared that Sherlock wasn’t only susceptible to the throes of music when he was a soloist; he moved with alarming enthusiasm in his chair, and John began to fear that he would somehow fall off the stage. Whether Sherlock was conscious of it or not, his approach to the music set the example for the rest of the violins. John knew that, ideally, that was the job of any principal violinist, but it seemed to be working particularly well in this case. He supposed that Sherlock showing any emotion was potent enough to spur the rest of the musicians into playing with energy.

John remembered to play just in time, ears habitually pricking up to listen to his fellow clarinets. He guiltily realized that he had been playing inattentively for the entirety of the first movement, mind focused on his living situation ( _and Sherlock_ , a hateful little voice in his head added). He silently vowed to pay more attention in the subsequent movements: Lestrade had asked him specifically for this favor, and John was going to mess it up because of his anxiety over finding a flat.

_Is that all?_

John was really starting to loathe his internal dialog.

 

* * *

 

An hour later, the orchestra had done well on their promise: Lestrade had not needed to stop them, and they had worked their way through all of Dvořák before starting in on the Strauss right away. When they stopped, Lestrade looked more pleased than usual. “That was… well, to be honest, I have no complaints,” he admitted, holding his hands out as though in apology. “I don’t want to wear you all out—” the horns behind John sighed in relief— “so we’ll run through the first half during the dress rehearsal tomorrow.”

As everyone began to pack up, Lestrade eyed John and motioned slightly with his head. John nodded, putting his clarinet in his case and saying a hasty goodbye to the woodwinds. He wove his way through the rows of musicians, his destination the podium. His step only stuttered when he realized that Sherlock was still seated, showing no sign of putting his instrument away. Rather, he was petulantly eying his instrument, picking at the strings. He looked up to see John approaching, and quickly looked back down; John saw a hint of red bloom high up on his cheekbones. John tried to ignore him, telling Lestrade “I think you should hire Jim.”

Lestrade raised his eyebrows. “You decided that quickly?”

John nodded.

“I’ll do it, but tell me your reasoning. Just for kicks.”

John thought for a second before replying “His technique is solid, tone clear.”

“Any complaints? Be honest now.”

John ignored Sherlock, who was obviously listening in on the entire conversation. “He’s not necessarily solo material, but you’re looking for a fourth, not a first. At least, I hope,” John joked weakly. The rasp in his voice had reemerged.

Lestrade nodded in assent. “We’ll wait until after Sunday, but I believe you. Keep an ear out for anything wonky, though.”

John said he would, then moved to leave the stage. He was aware of Sherlock putting his violin away at lightning speed and heard the familiar quick step behind him as he went through the stage door.

“Are you done ignoring me?” Sherlock asked from somewhere over his shoulder.

John turned around and adopted a pensive expression. “Hmm… nope, not yet.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset!” Sherlock’s voice shook with frustration.

“I’m sure you can deduce it,” John said calmly, not showing any of the anger that had been bubbling inside of him all day.

Sherlock shook his head. “If it’s to do with Irene—”

“It’s nothing to do with _Irene_ ,” John sneered cruelly on her name. On reflection, that wasn’t fair of him. “I don’t know her, why would I be upset with her?” There. Less insulting towards Irene, but hopefully communicating what he was really discontented with.

To John’s chagrin, Sherlock still didn’t understand. “Then what?”

John took a breath, preparing himself. His mind ran through ways of explaining himself without revealing any of the feelings he’d developed towards Sherlock, and none of them were feasible except for one: “I just think it’s unfair that you know everything about me, but refuse to tell me why you and Irene are so set on meeting every morning.”

Sherlock’s expression darkened visibly, even in the dim light of backstage. “I don’t know everything.”

“You know a damn sight more than you should!” The back of John’s brain registered that he was shouting; he was grateful that no one was around.

“John… I can’t tell you.” Sherlock’s eyes were pleading.

“Why?”

“You’ve only been here a week.”

John tensed. Fight or flight instincts kicking up, he thought. The implications of what Sherlock had said were clear: he thought that it was ridiculous for John to expect Sherlock to confide in him. John was barely part of the ensemble, and Sherlock probably didn’t even consider him to be a friend. John had been annoyed that Sherlock was hiding things from him, when in reality Sherlock might have just been uncomfortable sharing things with someone he viewed as a stranger. A twinge of hurt went through John: the prospect of being a stranger to Sherlock disturbed him.

He was afraid to ask a follow-up question. He inhaled deeply. “Why does that matter?”

John expected a number of answers. _It’s none of your business. We don’t really know each other. I’m not obligated to share things with you_.

Instead, Sherlock looked away and gave his answer in a low voice. “It would upset you. You’d hate both of us.”

That wasn’t what John had expected at all. It was much, much worse.

He knew, John thought. The soft expression on Sherlock’s face was so out of place, there was no other explanation. He knew and he was trying to gently let John down He didn’t want to tell John that he was seeing Irene because he knew John had a big, childish crush on him.

John felt his face heat up, humiliation pumping through his veins. Sherlock thought John was delicate enough to be irrevocably hurt that he and Irene dating. John felt ridiculous: he was a 36 year-old man, not some wilting flower. Now was the time to deny everything, to ask Sherlock just what he’s implying. He could still salvage his façade, and they could continue to be indifferent towards each other until John found another flat. Sherlock would feel foolish for assuming, and John could have the satisfaction of making Sherlock feel foolish. This was his chance.

Instead, John swallowed heavily and turned away.

Mike chose that moment to show up. “John! I was wondering if you wanted to go for a—” He stopped abruptly at the scene in front of him, and John tried to imagine it through his eyes: Sherlock looking apologetic was probably shocking enough, but John’s red face and trembling frame probably made quite a sight as well.

“Yes,” John blurted out. “Let’s go now.” At the very least, he could drown his shame in alcohol.

Mike seemed conflicted, looking between the two of them, but John strode toward the exit before anything else could be said. He didn’t dare look back at Sherlock as he left: he couldn’t bear to see that look on his face again, so out of character and pitying. A flustered Mike had no choice but to follow John’s quick strides, though he didn’t say anything as they emerged into the frigid November afternoon.

 

* * *

 

 Mike, still wisely nursing his first beer, waited until John had three pints in him before attempting conversation.

“So…”

John languidly raised his shoulders, then let them flop back down. Alcohol usually made him happy and talkative, but tonight he felt sullen and subdued. The idea of drowning his shame had backfired; it was now all he could think about. He wished Mike would leave.

He also knew that Mike was too good of a friend to leave him in this state. Instead, Mike leaned forward, attempting to get John’s attention. His voice was gentle, but firm. “John, what’s going on?”

John wanted to put his head down on the counter. He kept upright, but it was a close thing. There was so much going on, he didn’t know where to start: should he talk about his impending sexuality crisis or the fact that someone was trying to kill him? Choices, choices. He settled for mumbling “With what?”

“With Sherlock.”

John wished he could talk about the threat of death instead. “Nothing.”

“What I just saw wasn’t _nothing_ ,” Mike insisted. “I’ve never seen Sherlock like that. Or you, for that matter.”

John drained the last of his beer, looking sadly at the empty glass. London was ridiculously expensive when you wanted to get plastered. He had already spent twenty pounds on his three pints and the one he had bought for Mike. “I’m going to have another.”

“I think you’ve had enough,” Mike chided, grabbing John’s arm before he could get the barman’s attention. He was probably right, but it didn’t stop John from pouting while Mike continued. “Besides, you haven’t answered my question.”

John really did let his head fall on the counter this time. “What do you think’s going on?”

“Well, you already know about the rumors…”

“Do you think they’re true?”

Mike was silent. John felt the stickiness of the counter against his cheek as he turned his head to one side. “Well?” he prompted.

“No. You said they’re not.”

John laughed darkly, raising his head. “I don’t think anyone else will believe that.”

“Why?”

“Well, I’ve moved in with him, haven’t I?”

Mike fell silent again, and John groaned when he realized that he was trying to find some way to deny it.

“I shouldn’t have asked Sherlock for you,” Mike finally blurted. “I could convince Em, you could at least take the sofa.”

John wanted to accept Mike’s offer, but shook his head. “I couldn’t get in the way of the baby, Mike. Emily would be livid.”

“We could work something out,” Mike insisted.

For what felt like the tenth time since arriving in London, John remembered just how grateful he should be for Mike’s help. The man had helped him find a job, a flat, and was now offering his already-crowded space up just because John was having a row with a flatmate. Plus, he had done all of this with a newborn and two toddlers to take care of.

Despite the alcohol muddying his brain, John had enough sense to feel ashamed. If he took Mike up on his offer, he’d be another loose cog thrown into Mike’s already-chaotic life. He’d be an unnecessary source of stress to Emily, who wouldn’t like the idea of an old school friend of her husband’s indefinitely crashing on their couch. The kids would be confused and suspicious. There were a lot of problems they’d have to overcome; things would be strained.

On the other hand, all John had to do was talk to Sherlock and come to an agreement. He could promise Sherlock that whatever was going on was just a crush. It would be gone soon enough, and John could assure Sherlock that it wouldn’t affect his behavior while he lived at Baker Street. It would be a difficult conversation for John, but it would save Mike a lot of stress.

“I can fix it,” John said with what he hoped was confidence. Everything was fuzzy around the edges, so it could have just as easily been resignation.

“Sometimes things just don’t work—”

“No,” interrupted John, holding up a finger and pulling out his phone. He went to his texts, finding the one-sided conversation with Sherlock from the previous week. He still hadn’t saved Sherlock’s name to his contacts. He tapped out a quick message.

 

_Ok if I come back tonight? We should talk - JW_

 

He put his phone down, barely nodding at Mike before he heard a ping.

 

_Yes – SH_

 

“Ah, see!” John said, sliding his phone clumsily back into his pocket. “It’s all sorted.”

Mike looked unsure, but John knew he disliked conflict enough to not pursue the subject any farther. “Alright, then.”

Mike finished his drink as John swayed in his seat, focusing his gaze on one spot to avoid dizziness. Mike cleared his throat. “So, er… you haven’t, have you?”

“Haven’t what?”

“Shagged him.”

John span around so fast that he nearly fell out of his chair. Mike grabbed his arm, reflexes still sharp. “No!” John spluttered indignantly. “I just told you I haven’t!”

“You actually said that things might have changed because you’ve moved in with him,” Mike reminded.

John gave a huff of exasperation. “How are people even getting the idea, anyway?”

Mike gave him a long look. “You really don’t—” He cut off abruptly, silent for a moment. “It’s not important. We should probably be getting you home.”

“We’ve hardly been out,” John objected.

“We have a dress rehearsal and a concert tomorrow.”

John slid out of his chair in graceless assent.

 

* * *

 

 Mike saw John straight to the door of 221b and only left when John brushed off his attempts to help with the key. John could handle that on his own, even if his coordination at the moment made him feel like his fingers were coated in cooking oil. After a minute of fumbling he was triumphant, closing the door behind him and heavily making his way up the stairs.

He paused at the door to the sitting room: he hadn’t given himself time to feel nervous since he sent the text message, but now anxiety crept into his bones. The idea of talking frankly with Sherlock, telling him not to worry, that his unrequited feelings were transient, made John cringe. The only thing that made him feel better was knowing that, as bad as he was with emotions, Sherlock seemed to be even worse. This was going to be hellishly awkward for both of them, John was sure. He pushed open the door before he could talk himself out of it.

Sherlock was lying on the sofa, hands steepled beneath his chin. He didn’t look up when John entered, but he still murmured “You’ve had too much to drink.”

John stilled in the doorway. “Let’s have it, then.”

“Heavy, uneven step on the stairs. Slight fumbling with the doorknob. Anyone could have figured it out.”

“Congratulations.” John failed to keep the venom out of his voice.

Sherlock shifted so that he was facing away from John.

John sighed. He knew that he shouldn’t be isolating Sherlock even more, but he didn’t know where to start the impending conversation.

He was very surprised when Sherlock took a deep breath and started it for him.

“About Irene… I think you should know that—”

Despite demanding it from Sherlock so many times that day, John suddenly didn’t want to hear it. The dreary feeling inside of him was exacerbated by the beer he could feel sloshing around every time he moved, and he was afraid of doing something rash when Sherlock finally admitted it. Like crying. “Don’t.”

Sherlock rolled over and sat up, looking up at John in confusion. “Excuse me?”

John saw an out. He saw a way to avoid confronting what he and Sherlock both knew. It was cowardly, but John felt that he was all out of bravery for the time being. “You don’t have to tell me anything about Irene.”

“But this morning—”

“It doesn’t matter what I said this morning,” John said wearily. He scrunched his eyes shut, already regretting his next sentence. “Anyway, we hardly know each other.”

There was no reply from Sherlock. John opened his eyes to see what he thought was a look of hurt flash across the man’s face. John might have been imagining it in his desperation but, imagined or not, the expression made John want to apologize. _Of course I know you. And you know me. We met each other nine days ago and you know me better than anyone else._  

John didn’t say it. It was a ridiculously romantic thing to even picture saying, let alone give voice to. John needed to think practically. “It was strange of me to expect you to confide in me,” he continued, “I suppose it was just the shock of…. everything. I mean, in the past week, you and I both have almost been crushed or burned to death.”

“The shock,” Sherlock repeated slowly.

“Yeah, exactly. It makes people think they’re closer than they really are, you know, that sort of thing…” John trailed off weakly. He realized too late that he was digging himself into a hole; he hadn’t meant to be so concrete when it came to drawing the limits of their friendship. He supposed he could blame the alcohol in part, but that still couldn’t take back the things he was saying.

The look on Sherlock’s face was so icy that John could have sworn he felt the temperature in the room drop. “Precisely.”

“Yes, um… Good.” John shifted, avoiding Sherlock’s cold eyes. “So, um, about me staying here…”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.” Sherlock’s tone of voice seemed to suggest the opposite of what he was saying, and John flinched inwardly.

“I suppose I’d better start helping with rent, then.”

Sherlock didn’t give a sign that he’d heard. John feared impending vaporization from the look he was being pinned with.

“I’ll just—” John motioned upstairs. He wanted to get out of this disastrous conversation now, while he could still save what little face he had left.

Sherlock finally broke the stare and nodded woodenly before falling back onto the sofa.

John whirled around and climbed the stairs two at a time, stumbling slightly. He shouldn’t have even attempted it in his drunken state, but he wanted to get far away from the sitting room as fast as possible. Only when he closed his door did he let the destructiveness of what he had said wash over him.

He had negated everything that had happened over the past week. He had put it all down to the adrenaline and the rush of the mystery. He knew that he had lied to both himself and Sherlock: there was a connection between them that John had never had with anyone else, something that had sprung up in a matter of days. He had denied it because he was terrified of it. Sherlock could never feel the same way, and John had cut off their bond at the feet because he couldn’t stand Sherlock saying as much out loud.

John managed to clean himself up and set his alarm before collapsing into bed, his stomach churning with cowardice and alcohol. Dark thoughts of what could would happen next haunted him; it was an hour before he fell into an uneasy rest, his slumber marred by blurry, blood-soaked dreams.


End file.
